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' The Jjtry begged that some of the hiir/it pig might be handed itito the 
box" p. 130. 







ill ustr^v-t ions ^ 

NEW YORK: 

D. ftPPLETOJM AND CojVIPyVNY, 
1886. 




i,\ 



^^'^ ^v 



"U^ 



LONDON : 

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 

STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. 

Clin 

«TO. MARGARET SCOFIELO CLffli 

OCTOBER 4, 1946 

'T'E I "^HARV Of CO'W£^ 




PAGE 

The Two Races of Men i 

Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist i6 

Dream-Children ; A Reverie 31 

All Fools' I)ay 44 

The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers ....... 52 

St. Valentine's Day 73 

A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in the Metropolis . 80 

The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple 99 

A Dissertation upon Roast Pig 122 

My First Play 145 

Poor Relations 155 

Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading . . . .173 

Captain Jackson 188 

Imperfect Sympathies 201 

Reminiscences of Juke Judkins, Esq., of Birmingham . . 219 




The jury begged that some of the burnt pig might be handed into the 
box ........... Frontispiece 

Vignette Title-page 

Heading to "Two Races of Men" ....... i 

Sour parochial or state-gatherer ........ 3 

See how light he makes of it . . . . . . . '4 

Ralph Bigcd, Esq 5 

Your bastard borrower ......... 9 

What moved thee, wayward, spiteful K. ? . . . . . .12 

Be shy of showing it . . . . . . . . . .14 

Heading to "Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist" ..... 16 

Tail-piece ............ 30 

Their great-grandmother Field . . . . . . . > 31 

Carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece ..... 32 

At midnight gliding up and down the great staircase .... 35 

Roaming about that large mansion ....... 36 

Picking up the red berries ......... 37 

Would mount the most mettlesome horse . . . . . -39 

He used to carry me upon his back ....... 39 

Though he had not been dead an hour ...... 40 

The children gradually grew fainter to my view ..... 42 

We are nothing ; less than nothing, and dreams ..... 43 



Illustrations. 



Heading to "All FooL' Day" . 
Tail-piece ....... 

Heading to "The Praise of Chimney-S weepers 

What a mysterious pleasure it was to witness their operation 

See the sable phenomenon emerge in safety . 

It is good to give him a penny ..... 

They will hang their heads over the ascending steam . 
The rake reeling home from his cups .... 

The artisan stops to taste ...... 

A treacherous slide brought me upon my back in an instant 
Fast asleep, a lost chimney-sweeper .... 

This young nobleman ....... 

Was quoited out of the presence with universal indignation 

His inaugural ceremony was to clasp the greasy waist of old ( 

"Must to the pan again to be browned 

"May the Brush supersede the Laurel !' 

Heading to "St, Valentine's Day" 

Heading to " A Complaint of the Decay of Beggars in 

The all-.sweeping besom of societarian reformation 

Swaying a ferula for a sceptre 

Those old blind Tobits 

Were they tied up in sacks ? 

He was a natural curiosity . 

Perhaps I had no small change 

Their counterfeit looks, and mumping tones 

Heading to "The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple" 

Tail-piece ....... 

Heading to "A Dissertation apon Roast Pig" 
Gone out into the woods one morning 

Bo-bo 

Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation 

A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed 

He next stooped down to feel the pig 

He burnt his fingers . 

Armed with retributory cudgel 



the 



his nether 



Ursula 



Metropolis 



lip 



Ilhistrations. 



present 



Ho-ti trembled every joint ..... 

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to tell the secret . 
Ho-ti's cottage was burned down more frequently than 
The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked 
In process of time, a sage arose . 
Made a discovery .... 

First began the rude form of a gridiron 
A young and tender suckling 
His voice as yet not broken 
Maturer swinebood .... 

His stomach half rejecteth the rank bacon 

He is all neighbours' fare . 

One would not, like Lear, "give everything 

I made him a present of the whole cake 

My better feelings returned 

How naughty I was to part with her pretty 

It might impart a gusto 

Per flageUatio7iem extremam . 

Tail-piece ...... 

Heading to "My First Play" 

Heading to "Poor Relations" 

He entered smiling and — embarrassed . 

The guests think "they have seen him before" . 

A special commendation of your window-curtains . 

Begs to be helped — after the gentlemen 

Obnoxious to observation in the blue clothes 

Bowing and scraping, cap in hand 

Would venture to stand up against him in argument 

"You do not get pudding every day". 

Heading to "Detached Thoughts on Books and Readini 

Drink to your sweethearts, girls . 

Althea's horn in a poor platter . 

Let us live while we can .... 

Dear, cracked spinet .... 

A superb view as far as the spire of Harrow 



Illustrations. 



Birmingham 



He was a juggler, &c. ...... 

A chaise-and-four, in which he made his entry into Glasgow 
Tail-piece ........ 

Heading to "Imperfect Sympathies" . 

Heading to "Reminiscences of Juke Judkins, Esq., of 

I was always my father's favourite 

I had a little pair of pocket-compasses 

I used to eat my little packages of fruit in a corner 

It was time I enlarged my housekeeping 

T he loving disputes we had under those trees 

This a -little disconcerted me ... . 

Came running to us with his pockets stuffed out with oranges 



PAGE 

196 
198 
200 
201 
219 
221 
222 
224 
227 
229 
233 
235 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



The selection of the Essays of Charles Lamb 
here brought together has been governed mainly 
by their suitability for artistic Illustration. 

In some few instances, among the best of them, 
it were as difficult to fix those frolicsome fancies 
and sweetly wandering thoughts into pictures, as It 
is to photograph the galloping horse and preserve 
the sense of motion, or the broad laugh of mirth 
without its fixing into a grin. But there are others 
of the Essays so full of quaint character and visions 
of other times that they irresistibly tempt the pencil 
of the portrayer. 

To that temptation the writer has yielded. 

Doubtless there will be some who think it little 



Prefatory Note. 



short of sacrilege for the inky finger of the illus- 
trator to touch such works of perfect art as the 
Essays of Elia, and will recall that Lamb, in one 
of his moods, deprecated the book-illustration of 
Shakespeare, and perhaps infer that he would have 
chosen a like immunity for his own works. The 
inference is doubtful. There may be others who 
will trace a connection between the artist's name 
and that nationality which Lamb himself conceived 
entertained for him *' imperfect sympathies," and 
will charitably regard all shortcomings on that 
account. 

The artist can lay no claim to perfection of 
sympathy with that sweet inimitable Spirit, but 
ventures to deem that no uncommon frailty, and 
to remain — 

The Illustrator. 



1^$^^ 




Tv\^o T\^^^ f (/^en 



The human species, according to the best theory I 
can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the 
men luJio borrow^ and the men who lend. To these 
two original diversities may be reduced all those 
impertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, 
white men, black men, red men. All the dwellers 
upon earth, " Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites," 
flock hither, and do naturally fall in with one or other 



The Two Races of Men. 



of these primary distinctions. The Infinite superiority 
of the former, which I choose to designate as the 
great race, is discernible in their figure, port, and a 
certain instinctive sovereignty. The latter are born 
degraded. '' He shall serve his brethren." There is 
something in the air of one of this cast, lean and 
suspicious, contrasting with the open, trusting, generous 
manners of the other. 

Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of 
all ages — Alclbiades — Falstaff — Sir Richard Steele — 
our late incomparable Brinsley — what a family likeness 
in all four ! 

What a careless, even deportment hath your 
borrower ! what rosy gills ! what a beautiful reliance 
on Providence doth he manifest, taking no more 
thought than lilies ! What contempt for money, 
accounting it (yours and mine especially) no better 
than dross ! What a liberal confounding of those 
pedantic distinctions of meum and ttmm ! or rather, 
what a noble simplification of language (beyond 
Tooke), resolving these supposed opposites Into one 
clear intelligible pronoun adjective ! — What near 



The Two Races of Men. 



approaches doth he make to the primitive community^ 
— to the extent of one half of the principle at least. 

He is the true taxer who " calleth all the world 
up to be taxed " ; and the dis- 
tance is as vast between him 
and one of tLs, as subsisted 
between the Augustan Majesty 
and the poorest obolary Jew 
that paid it tribute-pittance at 
Jerusalem ! His exactions, too, 
have such a cheerful, voluntary 
air ! So far removed from 
your sour parochial or state- 
gatherers — those ink-horn var- 
lets, who carry their want of 
welcome in their faces ! He 
cometh to you with a smile, 
and troubleth you with no 

receipt, confining himself to no set season. Every 
day is his Candlemas, or his Feast of Holy Michael. 
He applieth the lene tonnentnni of a pleasant look 
to your purse, — which to that gentle warmth expands 




" Sour parochial or state' 
gatherer" 



TJie Tzuo Races of Men. 



her silken leaves, as naturally as the cloak of the 
traveller, for which sun and wind contended ! He 
is the true Propontic which never ebbeth ! — the sea 

which taketh 
handsomely at 
each man's hand. 
In vain the 
victim, whom he 
delighteth to 
honour, strug- 
gles with des- 
tiny ; he is in 
the net. Lend 
therefore cheer- 
fully, O man 
ordained to lend 
— that thou lose 
not in the end, 
with thy worldly penny, the reversion promised. 
Combine not preposterously in thine own person the 
penalties of Lazarus and of Dives ! — but, when thou 
seest the proper authority coming, meet it smilingly, 




yz.o^Aj. 



-^^2^.^ ^^ 



" See how light he tnakes of it.'' 



The Tzuo Races of AIe?t. 



as It were half- 
way. Come, a 




handsome sacri- 
fice ! See how 
light he makes of 
it ! Strain not 
courtesies with a 
noble enemy. 

Reflections like 
the foregoing 
were forced upon 
my mind by the 
death of my old 
friend, Ralph 
Bigod, Esq., who 
departed this life on Wednesday evening, dying, as 
he had lived, without much trouble. He boasted 
himself a descendant from mighty ancestors of 
that name, who heretofore held ducal dignities in 
this realm. In his actions and sentiments he be- 
lied not the stock to which he pretended. Early In 
life he found himself invested with ample revenues, 



'Ralph Bigod, Esq: 



The Two Races of Men. 



which, with that noble disinterestedness which I have 
noticed as inherent in men of the great race^ he 
took almost immediate measures entirely to dissipate 
and bring to nothing ; for there is something revolt- 
ing in the idea of a king holding a private purse ; 
and the thoughts of Bigod were all regal. Thus 
furnished, by the very act of disfurnishment ; getting 
rid of the cumbersome luggage of riches, more apt 
(as one sings) 

To slacken virtue, and abate her edge, 

Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise, 

he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great 
enterprise, ''borrowing and to borrow ! " 

In his periegesis, or triumphant progress throughout 
this island, it has been calculated that he laid a tythe 
part of the inhabitants under contribution. I reject 
this estimate as greatly exaggerated ; but having had 
the honour of accompanying my friend divers times 
in his perambulations about this vast city, I own I 
was greatly struck at first with the prodigious number 
of faces we met who claimed a sort of respectful 



The Tzuo Races of Men. 



acquaintance with us. He was one day so obliging as 
to explain the phenomenon. It seems these were his 
tributaries ; feeders of his exchequer ; gentlemen, his 
good friends (as he was pleased to express himself), to 
whom he had occasionally been beholden for a loan. 
Their multitudes did no way disconcert him. He 
rather took a pride in numbering them ; and, with 
Comus, seemed pleased to be '' stocked with so fair 
a herd." 

With such sources, it was a wonder how he con- 
trived to keep his treasury always empty. He did it 
by force of an aphorism, which he had often in his 
mouth, that "money kept longer than three days 
stinks." So he made use of it while it was fresh. 
A good part he drank away (for he was an excellent 
toss-pot), some he gave away, the rest he threw away, 
literally tossing and hurling it violently from him — as 
boys do burrs, or as if it had been infectious — into 
ponds, or ditches, or deep holes, inscrutable cavities of 
the earth ; — or he would bury it (where he would never 
seek it again) by a river's side under some bank, 
which (he would facetiously observe) paid no interest — 



The Two Races of 



but out away from him it must go peremptorily, as 
Hagar s offspring into the wilderness, while it was 
sweet. He never missed it. The streams were 
perennial which fed his iisc. When new supplies 
became necessary, the first person that had the felicity 
to fall in with him, friend or stranger, was sure to 
contribute to the deficiency. For Bigod had an 
undeniable way with him. He had a cheerful, open 
exterior, a quick jovial eye, a bald forehead, just 
touched with grey {cana fides). He anticipated no 
excuse, and found none. And, waiving for a while my 
theory as to the great race, I would put it to the most 
untheorising reader, who may at times have disposable 
coin in his pocket, whether it is not more repugnant 
to the kindliness of his nature to refuse such a one as 
I am describing, than to say no to a poor petitionary 
rogue (your bastard borrower), who, by his mumping 
visnomy, tells you that he expects nothing better ; 
and, therefore, whose preconceived notions and ex- 
pectations you do in reality so much less shock In 
the refusal. 

When I think of this man ; his fiery glow of heart ; 



1 he Tiuo Races of Men, 



his swell of feeling ; how magnificent, how ideal he 
was ; how great at the midnight hour ; and when I 
compare with him the companions with whom I have 
associated since, I grudge the saving of a few idle 




" Vour bastard borrozuer." 



ducats, and think that I am fallen into the society 
of lenders, and Hi lie men. 

To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased 
in leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a 



lo The Two Races of Men. 

class of alienators more formidable than that which 
I have touched upon ; I mean your borrowe7^s of 
books — those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the 
symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. 
There is Comberbatch, matchless in his depredations 1 
That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you, like a 
great eye-tooth knocked out — (you are now with me 
in my little back study in Bloomsbury, reader !) — with 
the huge Switzer-like tom.es on each side (like the 
Guildhall giants, in their reformed posture, guardant 
of nothing), once held the tallest of my folios, Opera 
BonavenhcrcE, choice and massy divinity, to which its 
two supporters (school divinity also, but of a lesser 
calibre, — Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas) showed but 
as dwarfs, — itself an Ascapart ! — that Comberbatch 
abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which 
is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to 
refute, namely, that " the title to property in a book 
(my Bonaventure, for instance), is in exact ratio to the 
claimant's powers of understanding and appreciating 
the same." Should he go on acting upon this theory, 
which of our shelves is safe ? 



The Two Races of Men. ii 

The slight vacuum in the left-hand case — two shelves 
from the ceiling — scarcely distinguishable but by the 
quick eye of a loser — was w^hilom the commodious 
resting-place of Brown on Urn Burial. C. will hardly 
allege that he knows more about that treatise than I 
do, who introduced it to him, and was indeed the first 
(of the moderns) to discover its beauties — but so have 
I known a foolish lover to praise his mistress in the 
presence of a rival more qualified to carry her off than 
himself. — Just below, Dodsley's dramas want their 
fourth volume, where Vittoria Corombona is ! The 
remainder nine are as distasteful as Priam's refuse 
sons, when the Fates boj-rowed Hector. Here stood 
the Anatomy of Melancholy, in sober state. — There 
loitered the Complete Angler ; quiet as in life, by 
some stream side. In yonder nook, John Buncle, a 
widower-volume, \vith '' eyes closed," mourns his 
ravished mate. 

One justice I must do my friend, that if he some- 
times, like the sea, sweeps away a treasure, at another 
time, sea-like, he throws up as rich an equivalent to 
match it. I have a small under-coUection of this 



12 



The Two Races of Men, 



nature (my friend's gatherings in his various calls), 
picked up, he has forgotten at -what odd places, and 
deposited with as little memory at mine. I take in 
these orphans, the twice-deserted. These proselytes 
of the gate are welcome as the true Hebrews. They 
stand in conjunction : natives, and naturalised. The 




" What moved thee, wayzuard, spiteful K. ?" 

latter seem as little disposed to inquire out their true 
lineage as I am. — I charge no warehouse-room for 
these deodands, nor shall ever put myself to the 
ungentlemanly trouble of adv^ertising a sale of them 
to pay expenses. 

To lose a volume to C. carries some sense and 
meaning in it. You are sure that he will make one 



7 lie Tzuo Races of Men. 



hearty meal on your viands, if he can give no account 
of the platter after it. But what moved thee, way- 
ward, spiteful K., to be so importunate to carry off 
with thee, in spite of tears and adjurations to thee to 
forbear, the Letters of that princely woman, the thrice 
noble Margaret Newcastle — knowing at the time, and 
knowing that I knew also, thou most assuredly wouldst 
never turn over one leaf of the illustrious folio : — what 
but the mere spirit of contradiction, and childish love 
of getting the better of thy friend ? — Then, worst cut 
of all ! to transport it with thee to the Gallican 
land — 

Unworthy land to harbour such a sweetness, 
A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt, 
Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's 
wonder ! 

hadst thou not thy play-books, and books of jests 



and fancies, about thee, to keep thee merry, even as 
thou keepest all companies with thy quips and mirth- 
ful tales ? Child of the Green-room, it was unkindly 
done of thee. Thy wife, too, that part-French, better- 
part-Englishwoman ! — that s/ie could fix upon no other 



H 



The Two Races of Men. 



treatise to bear away, in kindly token of remembering 
us, than the works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brook — 
of which no Frenchman, nor woman of France, 




'Be shy of showing it." 



Italy, or England, was ever by nature constituted to 
comprehend a tittle ! Was there not Zimmerman on 
Solitude ? 

Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate 



The Tzuo Races of Alen. 



collection, be shy of showing it ; or if thy heart over- 
floweth to lend them, lend thy books ; but let it be to 
such a one as S. T. C. — he will return them (generally 
anticipating the time appointed) with usury ; enriched 
with annotations, tripling their value. I have had 
experience. Many are these precious MSS. of his — 
(in matter oftentimes, and almost in qnaiitity not 
unfrequently, vying with the originals) in no very 
clerkly hand — legible in my Daniel ; in old Burton ; 
in Sir Thomas Browne ; and those abstruser cogita- 
tions of the Greville, now, alas ! wandering in Pagan 
lands. — I counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy 
library, against S. T. C. 




Mr5 B^Ues Opinions 
o/2Whi5t 

'' A CLEAR fire, a clean hearth,* and the rigour of the 
game." This was the celebrated wish of old Sarah 
Battle (now with God), who, next to her devotions, 
loved a good game of whist. She was none of your 
lukewarm gamesters, your half-and-half players, who 
have no objection to take a hand, if you want one to 

* This was before the introduction of rugs, reader. You 
must remenaber the intolerable crash of the unswept cinders 
betwixt your foot and the marble. 



Mrs. Battles Opinions on Whist. 17 

make up a rubber ; who affirm that they have no 
pleasure In winning ; that they like to win one game 
and lose another ; that they can while away an hour 
very agreeably at a card-table, but are indifferent 
whether they play or no ; and will desire an adver- 
sary, who has slipped a wrong card, to take It up and 
play another.* These Insufferable triflers are the 
curse of a table. One of these flies will spoil a whole 
pot. Of such It may be said that they do not play 
at cards, but only play at playing at them. 

Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She detested 
them, as I do, from her heart and soul, and would not, 
save upon a striking emergency, willingly seat herself 
at the same table with them. She loved a thorough- 
paced partner, a determined enemy. She took, and 
gave, no concessions. She hated favours. She never 
made a revoke, nor ever passed it over in her adver- 
sary without exacting the utmost forfeiture. She 
fought a good fight — cut and thrust. She held not 
her good sword (her cards) ''like a dancer." She sate 

* As if a sportsman should tell you he liked to kill a fox 
one day and lose him the next. 



Mrs. Battles Opinions on Whist. 



bolt upright, and neither showed you her cards, nor 
desired to see yours. All people have their blind 
side — their superstitions ; and I have heard 
her declare, under the rose, that Hearts was her 
favourite suit. 

I never in my life — and I knew Sarah Battle many 
of the best years of it — saw her take out her snuff-box 
when it was her turn to play ; or snuff a candle in the 
middle of a game ; or ring for a servant, till it was 
fairly over. She never introduced, or connived at, 
miscellaneous conversation during its process. As she 
emphatically observed, cards were cards ; and if I 
ever saw unmingled distaste in her fine last-century 
countenance, it was at the airs of a young gentleman 
of a literary turn, who had been with difficulty per- 
suaded to take a hand ; and who, in his excess of 
candour, declared that he thought there was no harm 
in unbending the mind now and then, after serious 
studies, in recreations of that kind ! She could not 
bear to have her noble occupation, to which she 
\v^ound up her faculties, considered in that light. It 
was her business, her duty, the thing she came into 



Mrs. Battles Opinions on Whist. 19 

the world to do, and she did it. She unbent her mind 
afterwards — over a book. 

Pope was her favourite author : his ' Rape of the 
Lock' her favourite work. She once did me the 
favour to play over with me (with the cards) his cele- 
brated game of Ombre in that poem, and to explain 
to me how far it agreed with, and in what points it 
would be found to differ from, tradrille. Her illustra- 
tions were apposite and poignant ; and I had the 
pleasure of sending the substance of them to Mr. 
Bowles ; but I suppose they came too late to be 
inserted among his ingenious notes upon that author. 

Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first love ; 
but whist had engaged her maturer esteem. The 
former, she said, was showy and specious, and likely 
to allure young persons. The uncertainty and quick 
shifting of partners — a thing which the constancy of 
whist abhors ; the dazzling supremacy and regal 
investiture of Spadille — absurd, as she justly observed, 
in the pure aristocracy of whist, where his crown and 
garter give him no proper power above his brother- 
nobility of the Aces ; — the giddy vanity, so taking to 

c 2 



20 Mrs. Battle s Opinions on Whist. 

the Inexperienced, of playing alone ; above all, the 
overpowering attractions of a Saiis Prendre Vole, — to 
the triumph of which there is certainly nothing parallel 
or approaching, in the contingencies of whist ; — all 
these, she would say, make quadrille a game of capti- 
vation to the young and enthusiastic. But whist was 
the solider game : that was her word. It was a long 
meal ; not like quadrille, a feast of snatches. One or 
two rubbers might co-extend in duration with an 
evening. They gave time to form rooted friendships, 
to cultivate steady enmities. She despised the chance- 
started, capricious, and ever-fluctuating alliances of the 
other. The skirmishes of quadrille, she would say, 
reminded her of the petty ephemeral embroilments of 
the little Italian states, depicted by Machlavel : per- 
petually changing postures and connections ; bitter 
foes to-day, sugared darlings to-morrow ; kissing 
and scratching in a breath ; — but the wars of whist 
were comparable to the long, steady, deep-rooted, 
rational antipathies of the great French and English 
nations. 

A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired in 



Mrs. Battles Opinions on Whist. 21 

her favourite game. There was nothing silly in it, like 
the nob in cribbage — nothing superfluous, ^oflttshes 
— that most irrational of all pleas that a reasonable 
being can set up : — that any one should claim four by 
virtue of holding cards of the same mark and colour, 
without reference to the playing of the game, or the 
individual worth or pretentions of the cards them- 
selves ! She held this to be a solecism ; as pitiful an 
ambition at cards as alliteration is in authorship. She 
despised superficiality, and looked deeper than the 
colours of things. Suits were soldiers, she would say, 
and must have an uniformity of array to distinguish 
them : but what should we say to a foolish squire, who 
should claim a merit from dressing up his tenantry 
in red jackets, that never were to be marshalled, 
never to take the field ? She even wished that whist 
were more simple than it is, and, in my mind, would 
have stripped it of some appendages, which, in 
the state of human frailty, may be venially, and even 
commendably, allowed of. She saw no reason for the 
deciding of the trump by the turn of the card. Why 
not one suit always trumps ? Why two colours, when 



2 2 Mrs. Battle s Opinions on Whist. 

the mark of the suit would have sufiiciently distin- 
guished them without it ? 

'' But the eye. my dear madam, is agreeably re- 
freshed with the variety. ]\Ian is not a creature of pure 
reason — he must have his senses delightfully appealed 
to. We see it in Roman Catholic countries, where 
the music and the paintings draw in many to worship, 
whom your Quaker spirit of unsensualizing would 
have kept out. — You yourself have a pretty collection 
of paintings — but confess to me, whether, walking in 
your galler}' at Sandham, among those clear \'andykes, 
or among the Paul Potters in the ante-room, you ever 
felt your bosom glow with an elegant delight, at all 
comparable to tJiat you have it in your power to 
experience most evenings over a well-arranged assort- 
ment of the court-cards ? — the pretty antic habits, like 
heralds in a procession — the gay triumph-assuring 
scarlets — the contrasting deadly-killing sables — the 
' hoary majesty of spades ' — Pam in all his glor}' ! — 

'' All these might be dispensed with ; and with their 
naked names upon the drab pasteboard, the game 
might go on ver}' well, pictureless. But the dcanty of 



Mrs. Battles Opinions on Whist, 23 

cards would be extinguished for ever. Stripped of all 
that is imaginative in them, they must degenerate into 
mere orambllnor. Imao^ine a dull deal board, or drum 
head, to spread them on, instead of that nice verdant 
carpet (next to nature's), fittest arena for those courtly 
combatants to play their gallant jousts and turneys in ! 
— Exchange those delicately-turned ivory markers — 
(work of Chinese artist, unconscious of their symbol, 
— or as profanely slighting their true application as 
the arrantest Ephesian journeyman that turned out 
those little shrines for the goddess) — exchange them 
for little bits of leather (our ancestors' money), or 
chalk and a slate ! " — 

The old lady, with a smile, confessed the soundness 
of my logic ; and to her approbation of my arguments 
on her favourite topic that evening, I have always 
fancied myself Indebted for the legacy of a curious 
cribbage-board, made of the finest Sienna marble, 
which her maternal uncle (old Walter Plumer, whom 
I have elsewhere celebrated), brought with him from 
Florence : — this, and a trifle of ^v^ hundred pounds, 
came to me at her death. 



24 Mrs. Battle s Opinions on Whist. 

The former bequest (which I do not least value), I 
have kept with religious care ; though she herself, to 
confess a truth, was never greatly taken with cribbage. 
It was an essentially vulgar game, I have heard her 
say, — disputing with her uncle, who was very partial 
to it. She could never heartily bring her mouth to 
pronounce ''Go'" — or ''That's a go!' She called it 
an ungrammatical game. The pegging teased her. I 
once knew her to forfeit a rubber (a five-dollar stake) 
because she would not take advantage of the turn-up 
knave, which would have given it her, but which 
she must have claimed by the disgraceful tenure of 
declaring " tivo for his heels!'' There is something 
extremely genteel in this sort of self-denial. Sarah 
Battle was a gentlewoman born. 

Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two 
persons, though she would ridicule the pedantry of 
the terms — such as pique — repique — the capot — they 
savoured (she thought) of affectation. But games for 
two, or even three, she never greatly cared for. She 
loved the quadrate, or square. She would argue 
thus : — Cards are warfare : the ends are gain, with 



Mrs. Battle s Opinions on Whist. 25 

glory. But cards are war, In disguise of a sport : 
when single adversaries encounter, the ends proposed 
are too palpable. By themselves, It Is too close a 
fight ; with spectators, It Is not much bettered. No 
looker-on can be interested, except for a bet, and then 
it is a mere affair of money ; he cares not for your luck 
sympathetically, or for your play. — Three are still worse ; 
a mere naked war of every man against every man, as 
in cribbage, without league or alliance ; or a rotation 
of petty and contradictory interests, a succession of 
heartless leagues, and not much more hearty Infrac- 
tions of them, as In tradrille. — But In square games 
(she meant zuhist), all that is possible to be attained in 
card-playing is accomplished. There are the incen- 
tives of profit with honour, common to every species — 
though the latter can be but very imperfectly enjoyed 
in those other games, where the spectator is only 
feebly a participator. But the parties In whist are 
spectators and principals too. They are a theatre 
to themselves, and a looker-on is not wanted. He 
is rather worse than nothing, and an impertinence. 
Whist abhors neutrality, or interests beyond Its 



26 Mrs, Battle s Opinions en Whist. 

sphere. You glory in some surprising stroke of skill 
or fortune, not because a cold — or even an interested 
— bystander witnesses it, but because your partner 
sympathises in the contingency. You win for two. 
You triumph for two. Two are exalted. Two again 
are mortified ; which divides their disgrace, as the 
conjunction doubles (by taking off the invidious- 
ness) your glories. Two losing to two are better 
reconciled, than one to one in that close butchery. 
The hostile feeling is weakened by multiplying the 
channels. War becomes a civil game. By such 
reasonings as these the old lady was accustomed 
to defend her favourite pastime. 

No inducement could ever prevail upon her to play 
at any game, where chance entered into the com- 
position, for nothing. Chance, she would argue — and 
here again, admire the subtlety of her conclusion ; — 
chance is nothing, but where something else depends 
upon it. It is obvious that cannot be glory. What 
rational cause of exultation could it give to a man to 
turn up size ace a hundred times together by himself ? 
or before spectators, where no stake was depending ? 



Mrs. Battles Opinions on Whist. 27 

— Make a lottery of a hundred thousand tickets with 
but one fortunate number — and what possible prin- 
ciple of our nature, except stupid wonderment, could 
it gratify to gain that number as many times suc- 
cessively without a prize ? Therefore she disliked the 
mixture of chance in backgammon, where it was not 
played for money. She called it foolish, and those 
people idiots, who were taken with a lucky hit under 
such circumstances. Games of pure skill were as 
little to her fancy. Played for a stake, they were a 
mere system of over-reaching. Played for glory, they 
were a mere setting of one man's wit, — his memory, 
or combination-faculty rather — against another's ; like 
a mock-engagement at a review, bloodless and profit- 
less. She could not conceive a game wanting the 
spritely infusion of chance, the handsome excuses of 
good fortune. Two people playing at chess in a 
corner of a room, whilst whist was stirring in the 
centre, would inspire her with insufferable horror 
and ennui. Those well-cut similitudes of Castles 
and Knights, the imagery of the board, she would 
argue (and I think in this case justly), were entirely 



28 M7's. Battle s Opinions on Whist, 

misplaced and senseless. Those hard-head contests 
can in no instance ally with the fancy. They reject 
form and colour. A pencil and dry slate (she used 
to say) were the proper arena for such combatants. 

To those puny objectors against cards, as nurturing 
the bad passions, she would retort, that man is a 
gaming animal. He must be always trying to get the 
better in something or other : — that this passion can 
scarcely be more safely expended than upon a game 
at cards : that cards are a temporary illusion ; in truth, 
a mere drama ; for we do but play at being mightily 
concerned, where a few idle shillings are at stake, yet, 
during the illusion, we ai^e as mightily concerned as 
those whose stake is crowns and kingdoms. They 
are a sort of dream-fighting ; much ado ; great 
battling, and little bloodshed ; mighty means for 
-disproportioned ends : quite as diverting, and a 
great deal more innoxious, than many of those 
more serious games of life, which men play without 
esteeming them to be such. 

With great deference to the old lady's judgment 
in these matters, I think I have experienced some 



M7^s. Battle s Opinions on Whist. 29 

moments in my life, when playing at cards y^r nothing 
has even been agreeable. When I am in sickness, or 
not in the best spirits, I sometimes call for the cards, 
and play a game at piquet for love with my cousin 
Bridget — Bridget Elia. 

I grant there is something sneaking in it ; but with 
a tooth-ache, or a sprained ankle, — vvhen you are 
subdued and humble, — you are glad to put up witlx 
an inferior spring of action. 

There is such a thing in nature, I am convinced, as 
sick whist. 

I grant it is not the highest style of man — I 
deprecate the manes of Sarah Battle — she lives 
not, alas ! to whom I should apologise. 

At such times, those terms which my old friend 
objected to, come in as something admissible. — I love 
to get a tierce or a quatorze, though they mean 
nothing. I am subdued to an inferior interest. 
Those shadows of winning amuse me. 

That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I 
capotted her) — (dare I tell thee, how foolish I am ?) — 
I wished it might have lasted for ever, though we 



30 



IVh's. Battle s Opinions on Whist. 



gained nothing, and lost nothing, though it was a 
mere shade of play : I would be content to go on in 
that idle folly for ever. The pipkin should be ever 
boiling, that was to prepare the gentle lenitive to my 
foot, which Bridget was doomed to apply after the 
game was over : and, as I do not much relish 
appliances, there it should ever bubble. Bridget and 
I should be ever playing. 





' Their great-grandinother Field.'" 



Dre^vm -(© l)ildr^n 

^ Rever/e. 



Children love to listen to stories about their elders, 
when they were children ; to stretch their imagination 
to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle, or 



D ream-Children ; a Reverie. 



grandame, whom they never saw. It was in this 
spirit that my Httle ones crept about me the other 
evening to hear about their great-grandmother Field, 
who Hved in a great house in Norfolk (a hundred 

times bigger 
than that in 
which they and 
papa lived) which 
had been the 
scene — so at 
least it was gene- 
rally believed in 
that part of the 
country — of the 
tragic incidents 
which they had 




" CaTZ'cd 071 i in wood upon the chiiii7iey-J>iecc." 



lately become 
familiar with 
from the ballad of the Children in the Wood. 
Certain It is that the whole story of the children 
and their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved 
out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the great 



Dream Children ; a Reverie. 33 

hall, the whole story down to the Robin Redbreasts ; 
till a foolish rich person pulled it down to set up a 
marble one of modern invention in its stead, with 
no story upon it. Here Alice put out one of her 
dear mother's looks, too tender to be called upbraid- 
ing. Then I went on to say, how religious and how 
good their great-grandmother Field was, how be- 
loved and respected by everybody, though she was 
not indeed the mistress of this great house, but 
had only the charge of it (and yet in some respects 
she might be said to be the mistress of it too) com- 
mitted to her by the owner, who preferred living in 
a newer and more fashionable mansion which he 
had purchased somewhere in the adjoining county ; 
but still she lived in it in a manner as if it had been 
her own, and kept up the dignity of the great house 
in a sort while she lived, which afterwards came to 
decay, and was nearly pulled down, and all its old 
ornaments stripped and carried away to the owner's 
other house, where they were set up, and looked 
as awkward as if some one were to carry away the 
old tombs they had seen lately at the Abbey, and 

D 



34 Drea77t Children ; a Reverie. 

stick them up In Lady C.'s tawdry gilt drawing-room. 
Here John smiled, as much as to say, " that would be 
foolish indeed." And then I told how, when she 
came to die, her funeral was attended by a concourse 
of all the poor, and some of the gentry too, of the 
neighbourhood for many miles round, to show their 
respect for her memory, because she had been such a 
good and religious woman ; so good Indeed that she 
knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great part 
of the Testament besides. Here little Alice spread 
her hands. Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful 
person their great-grandmother Field once was ; and 
how in her youth she was esteemed the best dancer — - 
here Alice's little right foot played an involuntary 
movement, till, upon my looking grave, it desisted — 
the best dancer, I was saying, in the county, till a 
cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and bowed her 
down with pain ; but It could never bend her good 
spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still up- 
right, because she was so good and religious. Then 
I told how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone 
chamber of the great lone house ; and how she be- 



Dream Children ; a Reverie, 



35 



lleved that an apparition of two infants was to be seen 
at midnight gliding up and down the great staircase 
near where she slept, but she said '* those innocents 
would do her no harm ; " and how frightened I used 
to be, though in those days I had my maid to sleep 
with me, because I w^as never half so good or religious 
as she — and yet I never saw the infants. Here John 
expanded all his eyebrows and tried to look coura- 
geous. Then I told how good 
she was to all her grand- 
children, having us 
to the great house 
in the holy-days, 
where I in 
particular 
used to spend 
many hours 
by myself, in 
gazing upon 
the old busts 
of the twelve 
Caesars, that 

D 2 




'"At midnight gliding- up arid down the great staircase." 



36 



Dream Children ; a Reverie, 



had been Emperors of Rome, till the old marble 
heads would seem to live again, or I to be turned 




" Roamifig about that large 7>ians!on.' 



into marble with them ; how I never could be tired 
with roaming about that huge mansion, with its 
vast empty rooms, with their worn-out hangings, 



Dream Children , 



Reverie. 



37 



fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken panels, with 
the gilding almost rubbed out — sometimes in the 
spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I had almost to 
myself, unless when now and then a solitary gardening 
man would cross me — and how the nectarines and 




" Ficking lip the red berries." 

peaches hung upon the walls, without my ever offering 
to pluck them, because they were forbidden fruit, 
unless now and then, — and because I had more 
pleasure in strolling about among the old melancholy- 
looking yew-trees, or the firs, and picking up the red 
berries, and the fir-apples, which were good for 



3 8 Dream Children ; a Reverie. 

nothing but to look at — or in lying about upon the 
fresh grass with all the fine garden smells around me 
— or basking in the orangery, till I could almost fancy 
myself ripening too along with the oranges and the 
limes in that grateful warmth— -or in watching the 
dace that darted to and fro in the fish-pond, at the 
bottom of the garden, with here and there a great 
sulky pike hanging midway down the water in silent 
state, as if it mocked at their impertinent friskings, — I 
had more pleasure in these busy-idle diversions than 
in all the sweet flavours of peaches, nectarines, oranges, 
and such-like common baits of children. Here John 
slyly deposited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes, 
which, not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated 
dividing with her, and both seemed willing to relinquish 
them for the present as irrelevant. Then, in some- 
what a more heightened tone, I told how, though 
their great grandmother Field loved all her grand- 
children, yet in an especial manner she might be said 

to love their uncle, John L , because he was so 

handsome and spirited a youth, and a king to the 
rest of us ; and, instead of moping about in solitary 



Dream Children ; a Reverie. 



39 




' Would inowit the most mettlesome horse." 



corners, like some of us, he would mount the most 

mettlesome horse 
he could get, when 
but an imp no 
bigger than them- 
selves, and make 
it carry him half 
over the county 
in a morning, and 
join the hunters 

when there were any out — and yet he loved the old 

great house and gardens too, 

but had too much spirit to be 

always pent up within their 

boundaries — and how their uncle 

grew up to man's estate as 

brave as he was handsome, to 

the admiration of everybody, but 

of their great-grandmother Field 

most especially ; and how he 

used to carry me upon his back 

when I was a lame-footed boy — for he was a good 




"He 7(sed to carry me 7iJ>on 
his back." 



40 



Dream Children; a Reverie. 



bit older than me — many a mile when I could not 
walk for pain ; — and how in after life he became 
lame-footed too, and I did not always (I fear) make 
allowances enough for him when he was impatient 

and in pain, nor re- 
member sufficiently how 
considerate he had been 
to me when I was lame- 
footed ; and how when 
he died, though he had 
not been dead an hour, 
it seemed as if he had 
died a great while ago, 
such a distance there is 
betwixt life and death ; 
and how I bore his 
death as I thought 
pretty well at first, but 
afterwards it haunted and haunted me ; and though 
I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, and 
as I think he would have done if I had died, yet I 
missed him all day long, and knew not till then how 




Dream Children ; a Reverie. 41 

much I had loved him. I missed his kindness, and 
I missed his crossness, and wished him to be alive 
again, to be quarrelling with him (for we quarrelled 
sometimes), rather than not have him again, and 
was as uneasy without him, as he, their poor uncle, 
must have been when the doctor took off his limb. — 
Here the children fell a-crying, and asked if their 
little mourning which they had on was not for uncle 
John, and they looked up, and prayed me not to go 
on about their uncle, but to tell them some stories 
about their pretty dead mother. Then I told how for 
seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in 
despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice 
W — n ; and as much as children could understand, I 
explained to them what coyness, and difficulty, and 
denial, meant in maidens — when suddenly turning to 
Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her 
eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, that I 
became in doubt which of them stood there before me, 
or whose that bright hair was ; and while I stood 
gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my 
view, receding, and still receding, till nothing at last 



42 



Dream Children ; a Reverie. 



but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost 
distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed 



-^E^ 




' The children gradually grew fainter to my view.'' 



upon me the effects of speech : '' We are not of Alice, 
nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children 
of Alice call Bartrum father. We are nothing ; less 
than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might 
have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of 
Lethe millions of ages before we have existence, and 
a name " and immediately awaking, I found my- 



Dream Children ; a Revt 



43 



self quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where I 
had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged 
by my side — but John L. (or James Elia) was gone 
for ever. 




' We are nothing-; less ihi 



and dreams." 




The compliments of the season to my worthy masters, 
and a merry first of April to us all ! 

Many happy returns of this day to you — and you — 
2ind you, Sir — nay, never frown, man, nor put a long 
face upon the matter. Do not we know one another ? 
what need of ceremony among friends ? we have all a 
touch of ^/la^ same — you understand me — a speck of 
the motley. Beshrew the m^an who on such a day as 
this, the general festival, should affect to stand aloof. 
I am none of those sneakers. I am free of the 
corporation, and care not who knows it. He that 



All Fools Day. 45 



meets me In the forest to-day, shall meet with no 
wiseacre, I can tell him. Stulhis swn. Translate me 
that, and take the meaning of It to yourself for your 
pains. What ! man, we have four quarters of the 
globe on our side, at the least computation. 

Fill us a cup of that sparkling gooseberry — we will 
drink no wise, melancholy, politic port on this day — 
and let us troll the catch of i\ miens — d2Lc ad me — due 
ad me — how goes it ? 

Here shall he see 
Gross fools as he. 

Now would I give a trifle to know, historically 
and authentically, who was the greatest fool that 
ever lived. I would certainly give him in a bumper. 
Marry, of the present breed, I think I could without 
much difficulty name you the party. 

Remove your cap a little further, If you please : It 
hides my bauble. And now each man bestride his 
hobby, and dust away his bells to what tune he 
pleases. I will give you, for my part, 

■ 'The crazy old church clock, 



And the bewildered chimes 



46 All Fools Day. 



Good master Empedocles,* you are welcome. It 
Is long since you went a salamander-gathering down 
^tna. Worse than samphire-picking by some odds. 
'Tis a mercy your worship did not singe your 
mustachios. 

Ha! Cleombrotus !f and what salads in faith did 
you light upon at the bottom of the Mediterranean ? 
You were founder, I take it, of the disinterested 
sect of the Calenturists. 

Gebir, my old freemason, and prince of plasterers 
at Babel, J bring in your trowel, most Ancient Grand ! 
You have claim to a seat here at my right hand, as 
patron of the stammerers. You left your work, if 
I remember Herodotus correctly, at eight hundred 
million toises, or thereabout, above the level of the 
sea. Bless us, what a long bell-rope you must have 
pulled, to call your top workmen to their nuncheon on 



-He who, to be deem'd 



A god, Icap'd fondly into Etna flames — ] 
[j • He who, to enjoy 

Plato's Elysium, leap'd into the sea — ] 
[I The builders next of Babel on the plain 

Of Senaar — 1 



All Fools Day. 47 



the low grounds of Shinar. Or did you send up your 
garlic and onions by a rocket ? I am a rogue if I am 
not ashamed to show you our monument on Fish- 
street Hill, after your altitudes. Yet we think it 
somewhat. 

What, the magnanimous Alexander in tears ? — cry, 
baby, put its finger in its eye, it shall have another 
globe, round as an orange, pretty moppet ! 

Mister Adams ' odso, I honour your coat — pray 

do us the favour to read to us that sermon, which you 
lent to Mistress Slipslop — the twenty and second in 
your portmanteau there — on Female Incontinence — 
the same — it will come in most irrelevantly and im- 
pertinently seasonable to the time of day. 

Good Master Raymund Lully, you look wise. Pray 
correct that error. 

Duns, spare your definitions. I must fine you a 
bumper, or a paradox. We will have nothing said or 
done syllogistically this day. Remove those logical 
forms, waiter, that no gentleman break the tender shins 
of his apprehension stumbling across them. 

Master Stephen, you are late. — Ha ! Cokes, it is 



48 All Fools Day. 



you ? — Aguecheek, my dear knight, let me pay my 
devoir to you. — Master Shallow, your worship's poor 
servant to command. — Master Silence, I will use 
few words with you. — Slender, it shall go hard if I 
edge not you in somewhere. — You six will engross all 
the poor wit of the company to-day. — I know it, I 
know it. 

Ha ! honest R , my fine old Librarian of Lud- 

gate, time out of mind, art thou here again ? Bless 
my doublet, it is not over-new, threadbare as thy 
stories : — -what dost thou flitting about the world at 
this rate ? — Thy customers are extinct, defunct, bed- 
rid, have ceased to read long ago. — Thou goest still 
among them, seeing if, peradventure, thou canst hawk 

a volume or two. — Good Granville S , thy last 

patron, is flown. 

King Pandion, he is dead, 

All thy friends are lapt in lead. — 

Nevertheless, noble R , come in, and take your 

seat here, between Armado and Quisada ; for in true 
courtesy, in gravity, in fantastic smiling to thyself, in 



All Fools Day. 4-Q 



courteous smiling upon others, in the goodly ornature 
of well-apparelled speech, and the commendation of 
wise sentences, thou art nothing inferior to those 
accomplished Dons of Spain. The spirit of chivalry 
forsake me for ever, when I forget thy singing the 
song of Macheath, which declares that he might be 
happy with either^ situated between those two ancient 
spinsters — when I forget the inimitable formal love 
which thou didst make, turning now to the one, and 
now to the other, with that Malvolian smile — as if 
Cervantes, not Gay, had written it for his hero ; and 
as if thousands of periods must revolve, before the 
mirror of courtesy could have given his invidious 
preference between a pair of so goodly-propertied 
and meritorious-equal damsels. * * * * 

To descend from these altitudes, and not to protract 
our Fools' Banquet beyond its appropriate day, — for I 
fear the second of April is not many hours' distant — in 
sober verity I will confess a truth to thee, reader. I 
love a Fool — as naturally as if I were of kith and kin 
to him. When a child, with child-like apprehensions, 
that dived not below the surface of the matter, I read 

E 



50 All Fools Day. 



those Parables — not guessing at the involved wisdom 
— I had more yearnings towards that simple architect 
that built his house upon the sand, than I entertained 
for his more cautious neighbour : I grudged at the 
hard censure pronounced upon the quiet soul that 
kept his talent ; and — prizing their simplicity beyond 
the more provident, and, to my apprehension, some- 
what unfeminine wariness of their competitors — I 
felt a kindliness, that almost amounted to a tendre, for 
those five thoughtless virgins. — I have never made an 
acquaintance since, that lasted : or a friendship, that 
answered ; with any that had not some tincture of 
the absurd in their characters. I venerate an honest 
obliquity of understanding. The more laughable 
blunders a man shall commit in your company, the 
more tests he giveth you, that he will not betray or 
overreach you. I love the safety which a palpable 
hallucination warrants ; the security, which a word out 
of reason ratifies. And take my word for this, reader, 
and say a fool told it you, if you please, that he who 
hath not a dram of folly in his mixture, hath pounds 
of much worse matter in his composition. It is 



All Fools Uay. 



51 



observed, that " the fooHsher the fowl or fish, — wood- 
cocks, — dotterels — cods'-heads, &c., the finer the flesh 
thereof," and what are commonly the world's received 
fools but such whereof the world Is not worthy ? and 
what have been some of the kindliest patterns of our 
species, but so many darlings of absurdity, minions of 
the goddess, and her white boys ? — Reader, if you 
wrest my words beyond their fair construction, it is 
you, and not I, that are the April Fool. 





■/24(lft^-^ 



T 



ney 3 weepers 



I LIKE to meet a sweep ; understand me — not a grown 
sweeper — old chimney-sweepers are by no means 
attractive — but one of those tender novices, blooming 
through their first nigritude, the maternal washings 
not quite effaced from the cheek, such as come forth 
with the dawn, or somewhat earlier, with their little 
professional notes sounding like the peep-peep of a 
young sparrow ; or liker to the matin lark should I 
pronounce them, in their aerial ascents not seldom 
anticipating the sunrise ? 

I have a kindly yearning towards these dim specks 
—poor blots — innocent blacknesses — 



The Praise of Chimney -Sweepers. 



I reverence these young Africans of our own growth 
' — these almost clergy imps, who sport their cloth 
without assumption, and from their little pulpits (the 



, III -^iiiiill 




" IVJint a iiiystc7-io7is pleasure it luas to luitiiess their operation.' 



tops of chimneys), in the nipping air of a December 
morning, preach a lesson of patience to mankind. 

When a child, what a mysterious pleasure it was to 
witness their operation ! to see a chit no bigger than 



54 



The Pi-aise of Chininey-Sweepers. 




^\ jr-M! 



one's self enter, one knew 
not by what process, into 
what seemed the fauces 
Averni — to pursue him 
in imagination, as he 
went soundingon through 
so many dark stifling 
)^ caverns, horrid shades ! 
— to shudder with the 
idea that '' now, surely 
-to revive at hearins: his 



"Sec tJie saUe phe7ioinenoii emerge in 
safety." 

he must be lost for ever 
feeble shout of discovered daylight — and then (O 
fulness of delight !) running out of doors, to come 
just in time to see the sable phenomenon emerge 
in safety, the brandished weapon of his art victorious 
like some flag waved over a conquered citadel ! I 
seem to remember having been told that a bad sweep 
was once left in a stack with his brush, to indicate 
which way the wind blew. It was an awful spectacle, 
certainly ; not much unlike the old stage direction 
in Macbeth, where the " Apparition of a child 
crowned, with a tree in his hand, rises." 



TJie Praise of Chimney-Sweepers. 



55 



Reader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry 
in thy early rambles, It is good to give him a penny 
— it is better to give him twopence. If it be starv- 
ing weather, and to the proper troubles of his hard 
occupation a pair of 
kibed heels (no un- 
usual accompaniment) 
be superadded, the 
demand on thy hu- 
manity will surely rise 
to a tester. 

There is a compo- 
sition, the groundwork 
of which I have un- 
derstood to be the 
sweet wood 'y^^^pt 
sassafras. This wood, 
boiled down to a kind 
of tea, and tempered with an Infusion of milk and 
sugar, hath to some tastes a delicacy beyond the 
China luxury. I know not how thy palate may 
relish it ; for myself, with every deference to the 




' // is good to gk'C Jiim a penJiy.^ 



56 The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers . 

judicious Mr. Read, who hath time out of mind kept 
open a shop (the only one, he avers, in London) 
for the vending of this "wholesome and pleasant 
beverage," on the south side of Fleet Street, as thou 
approachest Bridge Street — the only Salopian house 
— I have never yet adventured to dip my own par- 
ticular lip in a basin of his commended ingredients, 
a cautious premonition to the olfactories constantly 
whispering to me that my stomach must infallibly, 
with all due courtesy, decline it. Yet I have seen 
palates, otherwise not uninstructed In dietetical 
elegancies, sup it up with avidity. 

I know not by what particular conformations of the 
organ it happens, but I have always found that this 
composition Is surprisingly gratifying to the palate of 
a young chimney-sweeper — whether the oily particles 
(sassafras is slightly oleaginous) do attenuate and 
soften the fuliginous concretions, which are sometimes 
found (in dissections) to adhere to the roof of the 
mouth In these unfledged practitioners, or whether 
Nature, sensible that she had mingled too much of 
bitter wood In the lot of these raw victims, caused to 



The Praise of Chimney-Szueepers. 57 



grow out of the earth her sassafras for a sweet lenitive 
— but so it is, that no possible taste or odour to the 
senses of a young chimney-sweeper can convey a 
delicate excitement comparable to this mixture. Being 




" They -zuill hang their heads over the ascettdif/g steam." 

penniless, they will yet hang their black heads over 
the ascending steam, to gratify one sense if possible, 
seemingly no less pleased than those domestic animals 
— cats — when they purr over a new-found sprig of 
valerian. There is something more in these sym- 
pathies than philosophy can inculcate. 

Now albeit Mr. Read boasteth, not without reason, 
that his is the only Salopian honse, yet be it known to 
thee, reader — if thou art one who keepest what are 
called good hours, thou art haply ignorant of the 



58 TJie Praise of Chimney-Siveepers . 

fact — he hath a race of industrious imitators, who 
from stalls, and under open sky, dispense the same 
savoury mess to humbler customers, at that dead 
time of the dawn, when (as extremes meet) the rake, 
reeling home from his midnight cups, and the hard- 
handed artisan, leaving his bed to resume the pre- 
mature labours of the day, jostle, not unfrequently 
to the manifest disconcerting of the former, for the 
honours of the pavement. It 
is the time when, in summer, 
between the expired and the 
not yet relumined kitchen- 
fires, the kennels of our fair 
metropolis give forth their 
least satisfactory odours. The 
__ rake, who wisheth to dissi- 
l__^ pate his o'ernight vapours in 
more grateful coffee, curses 

*^ The rake ireUtig Jionic from his cups.'" 

the ungenial fume as he 
passeth ; but the artisan stops to taste, and blesses 
the fragrant breakfast. 

This is saloop — the precocious herb-woman's darling 




The Praise of Chimney-Siveepers. 59 



— the delight of the early gardener, who transports 
his smoking cabbages by break of day from Hammer- 
smith to Covent Garden's famed piazzas — the delight^ 




" The ai'tisan stoJ>s to taste.'' 

and oh ! I fear, too often the envy, of the unpennied 
sweep. Him shouldst thou haply encounter, with his 
dim visage pendent over the grateful steam, regale 
him with a sumptuous basin (It will cost but three 
halfpennies) and a slice of delicate bread and butter 
(an added halfpenny) — so may thy culinary fires, eased 
of the o'ercharged secretions from thy worse-placed 



6o The Praise of Chimney- Sweepers. 

hospitalities, curl up a lighter volume to the welkin — 
so may the descending soot never taint thy costly, 
well-ingredienced soups, nor the odious cry, quick- 
reaching from street to street, of the fired chimney, 
invite the rattling engines from ten adjacent parishes, 
to disturb for a casual scintillation thy peace and 
pocket ! 

I am by nature extremely susceptible of street 
affronts ; the jeers and taunts of the populace ; the 
low-bred triumph they display over the casual trip, 
or splashed stocking, of a gentleman. Yet can I 




\A ireacherons slide Irought me iiJ>o?i my lack in an instant.'" 



The Praise of Chimney-SiOeepers. 6 1 



endure the jccularlty of a young sweep with something" 
more than forgiveness. — In the last winter but one, 
pacing along Cheapside with my accustomed pre- 
cipitation when I walk westward, a treacherous slide 
brought me upon my back in an instant. I scrambled 
up with pain and shame enough — yet outwardly trying 
to face it down, as if nothing had happened — when 
the roguish grin of one of these young wits en- 
countered me. There he stood, pointing me out 
with his dusky finger to the mob, and to a poor 
woman (I suppose his mother) in particular, till 
the tears for the exquisiteness of the fun (so he 
thought it) worked themselves out at the corners 
of his poor red eyes, red from many a previous 
weeping, and soot-inflamed, yet twinkling through 
all with such a joy, snatched out of desolation, that 

Hogarth but Hogarth has got him already (how 

could he miss him ?) in the ]slarch to Finchley, 
grinning at the pieman — there he stood, as he stands 
in the picture, irremovable, as if the jest was to last 
for ever — with such a maximurh of glee, and minimum 
of mischief, in his mirth — for the grin of a genuine 



62 TJie P liaise of C himney- Sweepers . 

sweep hath absolutely no malice In It — that I could 
have been content, If the honour of a gentleman might 
endure it, to have remained his butt and his mockery 
till midnight. 

I am by theory obdurate to the seductiveness of 
what are called a fine set of teeth. Every pair of 
rosy lips (the ladles must pardon me) is a casket 
presumably holding such jewels ; but, methlnks, they 
should take leave to '' air " them as frugally as possible. 
The fine lady or fine gentleman who show me their 
teeth, show me bones. Yet must I confess that from 
the mouth of a true sweep a display (even to osten- 
tation) of those white and shiny ossifications strikes 
me as an agreeable anomaly in manners, and an 
allowable piece of foppery. It is, as when 

A sable cloud 
Turns forth her silver Hning on the night. 

It is like some remnant of gentry not quite extinct ; a 
badge of better days, a hint of nobility ; and, doubt- 
less, under the obscuring darkness and double night of 
their forlorn disgulsement, oftentimes lurketh good 



The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers. 



blood, and gentle conditions, derived from lost 
ancestry and a lapsed pedigree. The premature 
apprenticements of these tender victims give but too 
much encouragement, I fear, to clandestine and almost 
infantile abductions ; the seeds of civility and true 
courtesy, so often discernible in these young grafts 
(not otherwise to be accounted for) plainly hint 
at some forced adoptions ; many noble Rachels 
mourning for their children, even in our days, 
countenance the fact ; the tales of fairy spiriting 
may shadow a lamentable verity, and the recovery 
of the young Montagu be but a solitary Instance 
of good fortune out of many Irreparable and hopeless 
dejilialions. 

In one of the state beds at Arundel Castle, a few 
years since, under a ducal canopy (that seat of the 
Howards is an object of curiosity to visitors, chiefly 
for Its beds, In which the late duke was especially a 
connoisseur), encircled with curtains of dellcatest 
crimson, with starry coronets inwoven, folded 
between a pair of sheets whiter and softer than the 
lap where Venus lulled Ascanius, was discovered by 



64 



The Praise of Chimney -Sweepers, 




"Fast asleep, a lost chiiiiney-szveeper." 



chance, after all methods of search had failed, at noon- 
day, fast asleep, a lost chimney-sweeper. The little 
creature, having somehow confounded his passage 
among the intricacies of those lordly chimneys, by 
some unknown aperture had alighted upon this mag- 
nificent chamber ; and, tired with his tedious ex- 
plorations, was unable to resist the delicious invitement 
to repose which he there saw exhibited ; so, creeping 



TJie Pi'aisc of CJiimney-Szveepei^s. 



65 



between the sheets very quietly, laid his black head 
upon the pillow, and slept like a young Howard. 

Such is the account given to the visitors at the 
Castle. — But I cannot help seeming to perceive a con- 
firmation of w^hat I had just hinted at in this story. 
A high instinct was at work in the case, or I am 
mistaken. Is it probable that a poor child of that 
description, with whatever weariness he might be 
visited, w^ould have ventured, under such a penalty 
as he would be taught to expect, to uncover the 
sheets of a Duke's bed, and deliberately to lay 
himself down between them, 
wdien the rug or the carpet 
presented an obvious couch, 
still far above his pretentions — 
is this probable, I would ask, 
if the great power of nature, 
which I contend for, had not 
been manifested within him, 
prompting to the adventure ? 
Doubtless this young nobleman 
(for such my mind misgives 




' This young nobleman." 



66 The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers, 

me that he must be) was allured by some memory, not 
amounting to full consciousness, of his condition in 
infancy, when he was used to be lapped by his mother, 
or his nurse, in just such sheets as he there found, 
into which he was now but creeping back as into his 
proper incunabula, and resting-place. — By no other 
theory than by this sentiment of a pre-existent state 
(as I may call it) can I explain a deed so venturous, 
and, indeed, upon any other system, so indecorous, in 
this tender, but unseasonable, sleeper. 

My pleasant friend Jem White was so impressed 
with a belief of metamorphoses like this frequently 
taking place, that in some sort to reverse the 
wrongs of fortune in these poor changelings, he 
instituted an annual feast of chimney-sweepers, at 
which it was his pleasure to officiate as host and 
waiter. It was a solemn supper held in Smith- 
field, upon the yearly return of the fair of St. 
Bartholomew. Cards were issued a week before 
to the master sweeps in and about the metro- 
polis, confining the invitation to their younger fry. 
Now and then an elderly stripling would get in 



The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers. 



67 




" Was quoited out oj the presence with i 



al indignation.^^ 



among us, and be good-naturedly winked at ; but 
our main body were infantry. One unfortunate 
wight, indeed, who, relying upon his dusky suit, had 
intruded himself into our party, but by tokens was 
providentially discovered in time to be no chimney- 
sweeper, (all is not soot which looks so,) was quoited 
out of the presence with universal indignation, as not 
having on the wedding garment ; but in general the 
greatest harmony prevailed. The place chosen was 
a convenient spot among the pens, at the north 

F 2 



68 



The Praise of Chimncy-Siveepci's. 



side of the fair, not so far distant as to be imper\-ious 
to the agreeable hubbub of that vanity, but remote 
enough not to be obvious to the interruption of 
every ga-pi^^g spectator in it. The guests assembled 




^' His itiaug7iral ceremony ivas to clasp the greasy waist cf old dairie Ursula" 



about seven. In those little temporary parlours three 
tables were spread with napery, not so fine as sub- 
stantial, and at ever}' board a comely hostess presided 

with her pan of hissing sausages. The nostrils of the 



The Praise of Chiimiey-Sweepers. 



young rogues dilated at the savour. James White, as 
head waiter, had charge of the first table, and myself, 
with our trusty companion Bigod, ordinarily ministered 
to the other two. There was clambering and jostling, 
you may be sure, who should get at the first table, for 
Rochester, in his maddest days, could not have done 
the humours of the scene with more spirit than my 
friend. After some general expression of thanks for 
the honour the company had done him, his inaugural 
ceremony was to clasp the greasy waist of old dame 
Ursula (the fattest of the three), that stood frying and 
fretting, half-blessing, half-cursing '' the gentleman," 
and imprint upon her chaste lips a tender salute, 
whereat the universal host would set up a shout that 
tore the concave, while hundreds of grinning teeth 
startled the night with their brightness. O, it was a 
pleasure to see the sable younkers lick in the unctuous 
meat, with his more unctuous sayings — how he would 
fit the tit-bits to the puny mouths, reserving the 
lengthier links for the seniors — how he would intercept 
a morsel even in the jaws of some young desperado, 
declaring it ** must to the pan again to be browned, 



70 



TJie Praise of Chimney -Sweepers. 




" ' M7ist to the pan again to be bro^Mtied. " 



for it was not fit for a gentleman's eating " — how he 
would recommend this slice of white bread, or that 
piece of kissing-crust, to a tender juvenile, advising 
them all to have a care of cracking their teeth, 
which were their best patrimony, — how genteelly he 
would deal about the small ale, as If It were wine, 
naming the brewer, and protesting, if it were not 
good, he should lose their custom ; with a special 
recommendation to wipe the lip before drinking. 



The Praise of CJiimney-Siueepers. 



Then we had our toasts — "the King," — "the 
Cloth," — which, whether they understood or not, 
was equally diverting and flattering ; and for a 
crowning sentiment, which never failed, " ^lay the 
Brush supersede the Laurel I '" All these, and fifty 
other fancies, which were rather felt than compre- 
hended by his guests, would he utter, standing 
upon tables, and prefacing every sentiment with a 
"Gentlemen, give me leave to propose so and so,'' 
which was a prodigious comfort to those young 
orphans, every now and then stuffing into his 
mouth (for it did not do to be squeamish on these 
occasions) indiscriminate pieces of those reeking 
sausages, which pleased them mightily, and was 
the savouriest part, you may believe, of the enter- 
tainment. 

Golden lads and lasses must. 

As chimney-sweepers, come to dust — 

James White is extinct, and with him these suppers 
have long ceased. He carried away with him half 
the fun of the world when he died — of my world 



72 The Pi^aise of Chimney-Sweepers. 

at least. His old clients look for him among the 
pens ; and, missing him, reproach the altered feast 
of St. Bartholomew, and the glory of Smithfield 
departed for ever. 




'May the Briish siiposcde the Lmcrel V 




nesDbsy 



Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine ! 
Great is thy name in the rubric, thou venerable Arch- 
flamen of Hymen ! Immortal Go-between ; who and 
what manner of person art thou ? Art thou but a 
7iame^ typifying the restless principle which impels 
poor humans to seek perfection in union ? or wert 
thou indeed a mortal prelate, with thy tippet and 
thy rochet, thy apron on, and decent lawn sleeves ? 
Mysterious personage ! Like unto thee, assuredly, 
there is no other mitred father in the calendar ; not 



74 ^^- Valentine s Day. 

Jerome, nor Ambrose, nor Cyril ; nor the consigner 
of undipt infants to eternal torments, Austin, whom 
all mothers hate ; nor he who hated all mothers, 
Origen ; nor Bishop Bull, nor Archbishop Parker, 
nor Whitgift. Thou comest attended with thousands 
and ten thousands of little Loves, and the air is 

Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings. 

Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy precentors ; 
and instead of the crosier, the mystical arrow is borne 
before thee. 

In other words, this is the day on which those 
charming little missives, ycleped Valentines, cross and 
intercross each other at every street and turning. 
The weary and all forspent twopenny postman sinks 
beneath a load of delicate embarrassments, not his own. 
It is scarcely credible to what extent this ephemeral 
courtship is carried on in this loving town, to the great 
enrichment of porters, and detriment of knockers and 
bell-wires. In these little visual interpretations, no 
emblem is so common as the heai-t, — that little three- 
cornered exponent of all our hopes and fears, — the 



S^. Valentine s Day. 75 

bestuck and bleeding heart ; it is twisted and tortured 
into more allegories and affectations than an opera- 
hat. What authority we have in history or mythology 
for placing the headquarters and metropolis of god 
Cupid in this anatomical seat rather than in any other,, 
is not very clear ; but we have got it, and it will serve 
as well as any other. Else we might easily imagine, 
upon some other system which might have prevailed 
for anything which our pathology knows to the 
contrary, a lover addressing his mistress, in perfect 
simplicity of feeling, " ]\Iadam, my liver and fortune 
are entirely at your disposal ; " or putting a delicate 
question, " Amanda, have you a viidi'iff to bestow ? "^ 
But custom has settled these things, and awarded 
the seat of sentiment to the aforesaid triangle, while 
its less fortunate neighbours wait at animal and 
anatomical distance. 

Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and 
all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door. 
It 'Ogives a very echo to the throne where hope is 
seated." But its issues seldom answer to this oracle 
within. It is so seldom that just the person we want 



76 St. Valentine s Day. 

to see comes. But of all the clamorous visitations the 
Avelcomest in expectation is the sound that ushers in, 
or seems to usher in, a Valentine. As the raven him- 
self was hoarse that announced the fatal entrance of 
Duncan^ so the knock of the postman on this day is 
light, airy, confident, and befitting one that bringeth 
good tidings. It is less mechanical than on other 
days ; you will say, " That is not the post, I am sure." 
Visions of Love, of Cupids, of Hymens ! — delightful 
eternal commonplaces, which "having been will always 
be ; " which no school-boy nor school-man can write 
away ; having your irreversible throne in the fancy 
and affections — what are your transports, when the 
happy maiden, opening with careful finger, careful not 
to break the emblematic seal, bursts upon the sight of 
some well-designed allegory, some type, some youthful 
fancy, not without verses — 

Lovers all, 
A madrigal, 

or some such devise, not over-abundant in sense — 
young Love disclaims it, — and not quite silly — some- 



S^. Valentines Day, ^j 

thing between wind and water, a chorus where the 
sheep might almost join the shepherd, as they did, or 
as I apprehend they did, in Arcadia. 

All \^alentines are not foolish ; and I shall not 
easily forget thine, my kind friend (if I may have 

leave to call you so) E. B . E. B. lived opposite 

a young maiden whom he had often seen, unseen, 

from his parlour window in C e Street. She was 

all joyousness and innocence, and just of an age to 
enjoy receiving a \'alentine, and just of a temper to 
bear the disappointment of missing one with good 
hum.our. E. B. is an artist of no common powers ; 
in the fancy parts of designing, perhaps inferior to 
none ; his name is known at the bottom of many a 
well-executed vignette in the way of his profession, 
but no further ; for E. B. is modest, and the world 
meets nobody half way. E. B. meditated how he 
could repay this young maiden for many a favour 
which she had done him unknown ; for when a kindly 
face greets us, though but passing by, and never 
knows us again, nor w^e it, we should feel it as an 
obligation: and E. B. did. This good artist set 



"fi) St. Valentine s Day. 

liimself at work to please the damsel. It was just 
before Valentine's day three years since. He 
wrought, unseen and unsuspected, a wondrous work. 
We need not say it was on the finest gilt paper 
-with borders — full, not of common hearts and heart- 
less allegory, but all the prettiest stories of love from 
•Ovid, and older poets than Ovid (for E. B. is a 
scholar). There w^as Pyramus and Thisbe, and be 
sure Dido was not forgot, nor Hero and Leander, 
and swans more than sang in Cayster, with mottoes 
and fanciful devices, such as beseemed — a work, in 
short, of magic. Iris dipt the woof. This on 
Valentine's eve he commended to the all-swallowing 
indiscriminate orifice (O ignoble trust !) of the common 
post ; but the humble medium did its duty, and from 
his watchful stand the next morning he saw the 
•cheerful messenger knock, and by-and-by the precious 
■charge delivered. He saw, unseen, the happy girl 
•unfold the Valentine, dance about, clap her hands, as 
one after one the pretty emblems unfolded themselves. 
She danced about, not with light love, or foolish 
expectations, for she had no lover ; or, if she had, 



S^. Valentine s Day. 79 

none she knew that could have created those bright 
images which deHghted her. It was more Hke some 
fairy present ; a God-send, as our famlHarly pious 
ancestors termed a benefit received where the bene- 
factor was unknown. It would do her no harm. It 
would do her good for ever after. It is good to 
love the unknown. I only give this as a specimen 
of E. B. and his modest way of doing a concealed 
kindness. 

Good morrow to my Valentine, sings poor Ophelia ; 
and no better wish, but with better auspices, we wish 
to all faithful lovers, who are not too wise to despise 
old legends, but are content to rank themselves 
humble diocesans of old Bishop Valentine and his 
true church. 




B zg^rs I n t h ej^et ro pol i s 



The all-sweeping besom of societarlan reformation — 
your only modern Alcides' club to rid the time of its 
abuses — is uplift with many-handed sway to extirpate 
the last fluttering tatters of the bugbear Mendicity 
from the metropolis. Scrips, wallets, bags — staves, 
dogs, and crutches — the whole mendicant fraternity, 
with all their baggage, are fast posting out of the 
purlieus of this eleventh persecution. From the 
crowded crossing, from the corners of streets and 
turnings of alleys, the parting Genius of Beggary is 
*'with sighing sent." 

I do not approve of this wholesale going to 
work, this impertinent crusado, or belhtm ad exter- 



Beggars in the Metropolis. 



8i 



minationem, proclaimed against a species. Much 
good might be sucked from these Beggars. 

They were the oldest and the honourablest form 
of pauperism. Their appeals were to our common 
nature ; less revolting to an ingenuous mind than to 
be a suppliant to the particular humours or caprice 
of any fellow-creature, or set of fellow-creatures, 
parochial or societarian. Theirs were the only rates 
uninvidious in the levy, ungrudged in the assessment. 

There was a dignity springing from the very depth 
of their desolation ; as to be naked is to be so much 
nearer to the being a man, than to go in livery. 




The all-sweeping lesoin of 
societarian reformation^ 



A Complaint of the Decay of 



The greatest spirits have felt this in their reverses ; 
and when Dionysius from king turned schoolmaster, 
do we feel anything towards him but contempt ? 
Could Vandyke have made a picture of him, 
swaying a ferula for a sceptre, which would have 




" Swaying a ferula /o?- a sjej>ti 



affected our minds with the same heroic pity, the 
same compassionate admiration, with which we re- 
gard his Belisarius begging for an obolus ? Would 
the moral have been more graceful, more pathetic ? 



Beggars m the Metropolis. Z^ 

The Blind Beggar in the legend — the father of 
pretty Bessy — whose story doggrel rhymes and ale- 
house signs cannot so degrade or attenuate but that 
some sparks of a lustrous spirit will shine through the 
disguisements — this noble Earl of Cornwall (as indeed 
he was) and memorable sport of fortune, fleeing from 
the unjust sentence of his liege lord, stript of all, and 
seated on the flov/ering green of Bethnal, with his 
more fresh and springing daughter by his side, illu- 
mining his rags and his beggary — would the child and 
parent have cut a better figure doing the honours of a 
counter, or expiating their fallen condition upon the 
three- foot eminence of some sempstering shop-board ? 
In tale or history your Beggar is ever the just 
antipode to your King. The poets and romancical 
writers (as dear Margaret Newcastle would call them), 
when they would most sharply and feelingly paint a 
reverse of fortune, never stop till they have brought 
down their hero in good earnest to rags and the 
wallet. The depth of the descent illustrates the 
height he falls from. There is no medium which 
can be presented to the imagination without offence. 

G 2 



84 A Complamt of the Decay of 

There is no breaking the fall. Lear, thrown from 
his palace, must divest him of his garments, till he 
answer ''mere nature"; and Cresseid, fallen from a 
prince's love, must extend her pale arms, pale with 
other whiteness than of beauty, supplicating lazar 
arms with bell and clap-dish. 

The Lucian wits knew this very well ; and, with a 
converse policy, when they would express scorn of 
greatness without the pity, they show us an Alexander 
in the shades cobbling shoes, or a Semiramis getting 
up foul linen. 

How would it sound in song, that a great monarch 
had declined his affections upon the daughter of a 
baker ! yet do we feel the imagination at all violated 
when we read the ''true ballad," where King Cophetua 
woos the beggar maid ? 

Pauperism, pauper, poor man, are expressions of 
pity, but pity alloyed with contempt. No one 
properly contemns a Beggar. Poverty is a com- 
parative thing, and each degree of it is mocked by its 
"neighbour grice." Its poor rents and comings-in are 
soon summed up and told. Its pretences to property 



Beggars in the Metropolis. 



are almost ludicrous. Its pitiful attempts to save 
excite a smile. Every scornful companion can weigh 
his trifle-bigger purse against it. Poor man reproaches 
poor man In the street with impolitic mention of his 
condition, his own being a shade better, while the rich 
pass by and jeer at both. No rascally comparative 
insults a Beggar, or thinks of weighing purses with 
him. He is not In the scale of comparison. He Is 
not under the measure of property. He confessedly 
hath none, any more than a dog or a sheep. No one 
twitteth him with ostentation above his means. No 
one accuses him of pride, or upbraideth him with 
mock humility. None jostle with him for the wall, or 
pick quarrels for precedency. No wealthy neighbour 
seeketh to eject him from his tenement. No man 
sues him. No man goes to law with him. If I were 
not the independent gentleman that I am, rather than 
I would be a retainer to the great, a led captain, or a 
poor relation, I would choose, out of the delicacy and 
true greatness of my mind, to be a Beggar. 

Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the 
Beggar's robes, and graceful insignia of his profession, 



A Complaint of the Decay of 



his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which he is 
expected to show himself in public. He is never out 
of the fashion, or limpeth awkwardly behind it. He 
is not required to put on court mourning. He 
weareth all colours, fearing none. His costume hath 
undergone less change than the Quaker's. He is the 
only man in the universe who is not obliged to study 
appearances. The ups and downs of the world 
concern him no longer. He alone continueth in one 
stay. The price of stock or land affecteth him not. 
The fluctuations of agricultural or commercial pro- 
sperity touch him not, or at worst but change his 
customers. He is not expected to become bail or 
surety for any one. No m.an troubleth him with 
questioning his religion or politics. He is the only 
free man in the universe. 

The mendicants of this great city were so many of 
her sights, her lions. I can no more spare them than 
I could the Cries of London. No corner of a street is 
complete without them. They are as indispensable as 
the Ballad Singer ; and in their picturesque attire as 
ornamental as the signs of old London. They were 



Beggars in the Metropolis. 



87 



the standing morals, emblems, mementoes, dial- 
mottoes, the spital sermons, the books for children, 
the salutary checks and pauses to the high and rushing 
tide of greasy citizenry — 

Look 



Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there. 




' Tlwse o!d b:ini Tobits." 



Above all, those old blind Tobits that used to line 
the wall of Lincoln's-inn Garden, before modern 
fastidiousness had expelled them, casting up their 
ruined orbs to catch a ray of pity and (if possible) 



A Complaint of the Decay of 



of light, with their faithful Dog Guide at their feet, 
— whither are the}' fled ? or into what corners, blind as 
themselves, have they been driven, out of the w^hole- 
some air and sun-warmth ? immersed between four 
walls, In what withering poor-house do they endure 
the penalty of double darkness, w^here the chink of 
the dropt halfpenny no more consoles their forlorn 

bereavement, far 
from the sound of 
the cheerful and 
hope-stirring tread 
of the passenger ? 
Where hang their 
useless staves? and 
w^ho w^ill farm their 
dogs ? — Have the overseers of St. L — caused them 
to be shot ? or were they tied up in sacks and 
dropt into the Thames, at the suggestion of B — 

the mild rector of ? 

Well fare the soul of unfastidious Vincent Bourne, — 
most classical, and, at the same time, most English of 
the Latinists ! — who has treated of this human and 




' Vr'cre they tied up in sacks' 



Beggars in the Metropolis. 89 

quadrupedal alliance, this dog and man friendship, in 
the sweetest of his poems, the Epitaphiitin in Caneni, 
or, Dogs Epitaph. Reader, peruse it ; and say, if 
customary sights, which could call up such gentle 
poetry as this, were of a nature to do more harm 
or good to the moral sense of the passengers 
through the daily thoroughfares of a vast and busy 
metropolis. 

Pauperis hie Iri requiesco Lyciscus, herilis, 

Dum vixi, tutela vigil cokimenque senecta^, 

Dux c^eco fidus : nee, me ducente, solebat, 

Praetenso hinc atque hinc baculo, per iniqua locorum 

Incertam explorare viam ; sed fila secutus, 

Quae dubios regerent passus, vestigia tuta 

Fixit inoffenso gressu ; gelidumque sedile 

In nudo nactus saxo, qua praetereuntium 

Unda frequens confluxit, ibi miserisque tenebras 

Lamentis, noctemque oculis ploravit obortam. 

Ploravit nee frustra ; obolum dedit alter et alter, 

Quels corda et mentem indiderat natura benignam. 

Ad latus interea jacui sopitus herile, 

Vel mediis vigil in somnis ; ad herilia jussa 

Auresque atque animum arrectus, seu frustula amice 

Porrexit sociasque dapes, seu longa diei 

Taedia perpessus, reditum sub noete parabat. 

Hi mores, haee vita fuit, dum fata sinebant, 
Dum neque languebam morbis, nee inerte seneeta 
Quae tandem obrepsit, veterique satellite ea^eum 



90 A Complaint of the Decay of 

Orbavit dominum ; prisci sed gratia facti 
Ne tota intereat, longos deleta per annos, 
Exiguum hunc Irus tumulum de cespite fecit, 
Etsi inopis, non ingratae, munuscula dextr^ ; 
Carmine signavitque brevi, dominumque canemque, 
Quod memoret, fidumque Canem dominumque Be- 
nignum. 

Poor Irus' faithful wolf-dog here I lie, 

That wont to tend my old blind master's steps, 

His guide and guard ; nor, while my service lasted,. 

Had he occasion for that staff, with which 

He now goes picking out his path in fear 

Over the highways and crossings ; but would plant,, 

Safe in the conduct of my friendly string, 

A firm foot forward still, till he had reach'd 

His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide 

Of passers-by in thickest confluence flow'd : 

To whom with loud and passionate laments 

From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd. 

Nor wail'd to all in vain : some here and there, 

The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave. 

I meantime at his feet obsequious slept ; 

Not all -asleep in sleep, but heart and ear 

Prick'd up at his least motion ; to receive 

At his kind hand my customary crumbs, 

And common portion in his feast of scraps ; 

Or when night warn'd us homeward, tired and spent 

With our long day and tedious beggary. 

These were my manners, this my way of life 
Till age and slow disease me overtook. 
And sever'd from my sightless master's side. 
But lest the grace of so good deeds should die 



Beggars in the Metropolis. 91 

Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost, 
This slender tomb of turf hath Irus reared, 
Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand, 
And with short verse inscribed it, to attest, 
In long and lasting union to attest, 
The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog. 

These dim eyes have in vain explored for some 
months past a well-known figure, or part of the figure, 
of a man, who used to glide his comely upper half 
over the pavements of London, wheeling along with 
most ingenious celerity upon a machine of wood ; a 
spectacle to natives, to foreigners, and to children. 
He was of a robust make, with a florid sailor-like 
complexion, and his head was bare to the storm and 
sunshine. He was a natural curiosity, a speculation 
to the scientific, a prodigy to the simple. The infant 
would stare at the mighty man brought down to his 
own level. The common cripple would despise his 
own pusillanimity, viewing the hale stoutness, and 
hearty heart, of this half-limbed giant. Few but must 
have noticed him ; for the accident which brought 
him low took place during the riots of 1780, and he 
has been a groundlins^ so lone. He seemed earth- 



92 



A Complaint of the Decay of 




'He ivas a 7intic7-al 



born, an Antaeus, and to suck in fresh vigour from the 
soil which he neighboured. He was a grand frag- 
ment ; as good as an Elgin marble. The nature, 
which should have recruited his reft legs and thighs, 
was not lost, but only retired into his upper parts, and 
he was half a Hercules. I heard a tremendous voice 
thundering and growling, as before an earthquake, 
and casting down my eyes, it was this mandrake 
reviling a steed that had started at his portentous 



Beggars in the Metropolis, 93 



appearance. He seemed to want but his just stature 
to have rent the offending quadruped in shivers. He 
was as the man-part of a centaur, from which the 
horse-half had been cloven in some dire Lapithan 
controversy. He moved on, as if he could have 
made shift with yet half of the body-portion which 
was left him. The os sublime was not wanting ; 
and he threw out yet a jolly countenance upon the 
heavens. Forty-and-two years had he driven this 
out-of-door trade, and now that his hair is grizzled 
In the service, but his good spirits no way impaired, 
because he is not content to exchange his free 
air and exercise for the restraints of a poor-house, 
he Is expiating his contumacy in one of those 
houses (ironically christened) of Correction. 

Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed 
a nuisance, which called for legal Interference to 
remove ? or not rather a salutary and a touching 
object to the passers-by in a great city ? Among 
her shows, her museums, and supplies for ever-gaping 
curiosity (and what else but an accumulation of sights 
— endless sights — is a great city ; or for what else Is 



94 ^ Complaint of the Decay of 

it desirable ?) was there not room for one Lusus (not 
Naturce, Indeed, but) Accidentium 1 What if in forty- 
and-two years' going about, the man had scraped 
together enough to give a portion to his child (as 
the rumour ran) of a few hundreds — whom had he 
injured ? — whom had he imposed upon ? The con- 
tributors had enjoyed their sight for their pennies. 
What if after being exposed all day to the heats, the 
rains, and the frosts of heaven — shuffling his ungainly 
trunk along in an elaborate and painful motion — he 
was enabled to retire at night to enjoy himself at a 
club of his fellow cripples over a dish of hot meat and 
vegetables, as the charge was gravely brought against 
him by a clergyman deposing before a House of 
Commons' Committee — was this, or was his truly 
paternal consideration, which (if a fact) deserved a 
statue rather than a whipping-post, and is inconsistent, 
at least, with the exaggeration of nocturnal orgies 
which he has been slandered with — a reason that 
he should be deprived of his chosen, harmless, nay, 
edifying way of life, and be committed in hoary age 
for a sturdy vagabond ? — 



Beggars in the Metropolis. 95 

There was a Yorick once, whom it would not have 
shamed to have sate down at the cripples' feast, and 
to have thrown in his benediction, ay, and his mite 
too, for a companionable symbol. " Age, thou hast 
lost thy breed." — 

Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes 
made by begging are (I verily believe) misers' calum- 
nies. One was much talked of in the public papers 
some time since, and the usual charitable inferences 
deduced. A clerk in the Bank was surprised with 
the announcement of a five-hunded-pound legacy 
left him by a person whose name he was a stranger 
to. It seems that in his daily morning walks from 
Peckham (or some village thereabouts) where he 
lived, to his office, it had been his practice for the 
last twenty years to drop his halfpenny duly into the 
hat of some blind Bartimeus, that sate begging alms 
by the wayside in the Borough. The good old 
beggar recognised his daily benefactor by the voice 
only ; and when he died, left all the amassings of his 
alms (that had been half a century perhaps in the 
accumulating) to his old Bank friend. Was this a 



96 



A Complaint of the Decay of 



story to purse up people's hearts, and pennies, 
against giving an alms to the blind ? — or not rather 
a beautiful moral of well-directed charity on the 
one part, and noble gratitude upon the other ? 
I sometimes wish I had been that Bank clerk. 
I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of 
creature, blinking, and looking 
up with his no eyes in the 
sun — • 

Is it possible I could have 
steeled my purse against him ? 
Perhaps I had no small 
change. 

Reader, do not be frightened 
at the hard words imposition, 
imposture^-^7W, and ask no 
questions. Cast thy bread upon 
the waters. Some have un- 
awares, (like this Bank clerk) 
entertained angels. 
Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted 
distress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor 




" Perhaps I had 7io small 
cJiange." 



Beggai's in the Meii^opolis. 97 

creature (outwardly and visibly such) comes before 
thee, do not stay to inquire whether the ''seven small 
children," in whose name he implores thy assistance, 
have a veritable existence. Rake not into the bowels 
of unwelcome truth to save a halfpenny. It is good 
to believe him. If he be not all that he pretendeth. 




" Their counterfeit looks, and inuntping tones.'" 

give^ and under a personate father of a family, think 
(if thou pleasest) that thou hast relieved an indigent 
bachelor. When they come with their counterfeit 
looks, and mumping tones, think them players. You 
pay your money to see a comedian feign these things, 
which, concerning these poor people, thou canst not 
certainly tell whether they are feigned or not. 

H 



98 The Complaint of the Decay of Beggars. 

['' Pray God, your honour, relieve me," said a poor 

beadswoman to my friend L one day : "I have 

seen better days." *' So have I, my good woman," 
retorted he, looking up at the welkin, which was just 
then threatening a storm — and the jest (he will have 
it) was as good to the beggar as a tester. It was, at 
all events, kinder than consigning her to the stocks, or 
the parish beadle. — - 

But L. has a way of viewing things in rather a 
paradoxical light on some occasions.] 





The Old Beneber^ 
of t[)e Inner Temple. 

I WAS born, and passed the first seven years of my 
life, in the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, 
its fountains, its river, I had almost said — for in those 
young years, what was this king of rivers to me but a 
stream that watered our pleasant places ? — these are of 
my oldest recollections. I repeat, to this day, no verses 
to myself more frequently, or with kindlier emotion, 
than those of Spenser, where he speaks of this spot : 

There when they came, whereas those bricky towers. 
The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride, 
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers, 
There whylome wont the Templer knights to bide, 
Till they decayed through pride. 

H 2 



lOO The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 

Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis. 
What a transition for a countryman visiting London 
for the first time — the passing from the crowded 
Strand or Fleet Street, by unexpected avenues, into 
its magnificent ample squares, its classic green re- 
cesses! What a cheerful, liberal look hath that 
portion of it, which, from three sides, overlooks the 
greater garden ; that goodly pile 

Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight, 

confronting with massy contrast, the lighter, older, 
more fantastically-shrouded one, named of Harcourt, 
with the cheerful Crown-Office-row (place of my 
kindly engendrure), right opposite the stately stream, 
which washes the garden-foot with her yet scarcely 
trade-polluted waters, and seems but just weaned from 
her Twickenham Naiades ! a man would give some- 
thing to have been born in such places. What a 
collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall, where 
the fountain plays, which I have made to rise and fall, 
how many times ! to the astoundment of the young 
urchins, my contemporaries, who, not being able to 



The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. loi 

guess at its recondite machinery, were almost tempted 
to hail the wondrous work as magic ! What an 
antique air had the now almost effaced sun-dials, with 
their moral inscriptions, seeming coevals with that 
Time which they measured, and to take their revela- 
tions of its flight immediately from heaven, holding 
correspondence with the fountain of light ! How 
would the dark line steal imperceptibly on, watched 
by the eye of childhood, eager to detect its move- 
ment, never catched, nice as an evanescent cloud, or 
the first arrests of sleep ! 

Ah ! yet doth beauty Hke a dial hand 

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived ! 

What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous 
embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn 
dulness of communication, compared with the simple 
altar-like structure and silent heart-language of the 
old dial ! It stood as the garden god of Christian 
gardens. Why is it almost everywhere vanished ? 
If its business-use be superseded by more elaborate 
inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have 



102 The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 

pleaded for its continuance. It spoke of moderate 
labours, of pleasures not protracted after sunset, of 
temperance, and good hours. It was the primitive 
clock, the horologe of the first world. Adam could 
scarce have missed it in Paradise. It was the 
measure appropriate for sweet plants and flowers to 
spring by, for the birds to apportion their silver 
warblings by, for flocks to pasture and be led to fold 
by. The shepherd " carved it out quaintly in the 
sun ; " and, turning philosopher by the very occupa- 
tion, provided it with mottoes more touching than 
tombstones. It was a pretty device of the gardener, 
recorded by Marvell, who, in the days of artificial 
gardening, made a dial out of herbs and flowers. I 
must quote his verses a little higher up, for they are 
full, as all his serious poetry was, of a witty delicacy. 
They will not come in awkwardly, I hope, in a talk of 
fountains and sun-dials. He is speaking of sweet 
garden scenes : — 

What wondrous life is this I lead ! 
Ripe apples drop about my head. 
The luscious clusters of the vine 
Upon my mouth do crush their wine. 



The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 103 



The nectarine, and curious peach, 

Into my hands themselves do reach. 

Stumbhng on melons, as I pass, 

Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass. 

Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less 

Withdraws into its happiness. 

The mind, that ocean, where each kind 

Does straight its own resemblance find ; 

Yet it 'creates, transcending these, 

Far other worlds, and other seas ; 

Annihilating all that's made 

To a green thought in a green shade. 

Here at the fountain's sliding foot, 

Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root. 

Casting the body's vest aside, 

My soul into the boughs does glide ; 

There, like a bird, it sits and sings, 

Then whets and claps its silver wings, 

And, till prepared for longer flight, 

Waves in its plumes the various light. 

How well the skilful gardener drew 

Of flowers and herbs, this dial new 

Where, from above, the milder sun 

Does through a fragrant zodiac run : 

And, as it works, the industrious bee 

Computes its time as well as we. 

How could such sweet and wholesome hours 

Be reckoned, but with herbs and flowers ? * 

The artificial fountains of the metropolis are, in like 
manner, fast vanishing. Most of them are dried up cr 

* From a copy of verses entitled " The Garden." 



104 ^^^^^ ^^^ Benchers of the Inner Temple. 

bricked over. Yet, where one Is left, as In that Httle 
green nook behind the South-Sea House, what a 
freshness It gives to the dreary pile ! Four little 
winged marble boys used to play their virgin fancies, 
spouting out ever fresh streams from their Innocent- 
wanton lips in the square of Lincoln's Inn, when I 
was no bigger than they were figured. They are 
gone, and the spring choked up. The fashion, they 
tell me, is gone by, and these things are esteemed 
childish. Why not, then, gratify children, by letting 
them stand ? Lawyers, I suppose, were children 
once. They are awakening images to them at least. 
Why must everything smack of man, and mannish ? 
Is the world all grown up ? Is childhood dead ? Or 
is there not in the bosoms of the wisest and the best 
some of the child's heart left, to respond to its earliest 
enchantments ? The figures were grotesque. Are 
the stiff-wlgged living figures, that still flutter and 
chatter about that area, less Gothic in appearance ? 
or Is the splutter of their hot rhetoric one-half so 
refreshing and Innocent as the cool little playful 
streams those exploded cherubs uttered ? 



The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 105 

They have lately Gothiclsed the entrance to the 
Inner Temple-hall, and the library-front; to assimilate 
them, I suppose, to the body of the hall, which they 
do not at all resemble. What is become of the 
winged horse that stood over the former ? a stately 
arms ! and who has removed those frescoes of the 
Virtues, which Italianised the end of the Paper- 
buildings ? — my first hint of allegory ! They must 
account to me for these things, which I miss so 
greatly. 

The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used to call 
the parade ; but the traces are passed away of the 
footsteps which made its pavement awful ! It is 
become common and profane. The old benchers 
had it almost sacred to themselves, in the forepart 
of the day at least. They might not be sided or 
jostled. Their air and dress asserted the parade. 
You left wide spaces betwixt you when you passed 
them. We walk on even terms with their successors. 

The roguish eye of J- 11, ever ready to be delivered 

of a jest, almost invites a stranger to vie a repartee 
with it. But what insolent familiar durst have mated 



io6 The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 



Thomas Coventry ? — whose person was a quadrate, 
his step massy and elephantine, his face square as 
the Hon's, his gait peremptory and path-keeping, 
indivertible from his way as a moving column, the 
scarecrow of his inferiors, the browbeater of equals and 
superiors, w^ho made a solitude of children wherever 
he came, for they fled his insufferable presence, as 
they would have shunned an Elisha bear. His growl 
was as thunder in their ears, whether he spake to 
them in mirth or In rebuke ; his Invitatory notes being, 
Indeed, of all, the most repulsive and horrid. Clouds 
of snuff, aggravating the natural terrors of his speech, 
broke from each majestic nostril, darkening the air. 
He took it, not by pinches, but a palmful at once, — 
diving for It under the mighty flaps of his old- 
fashioned waistcoat pocket ; his waistcoat red and 
angry, his coat dark rappee, tinctured by dye original 
and by adjuncts, with buttons of obsolete gold. And 
so he paced the terrace. 

By his side a milder form was sometimes to be 
seen ; the pensive gentility of Samuel Salt. They 
were coevals, and had nothing but that and their 



The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 107 

benchership in common. In politics Salt was a whig, 
and Coventry a staunch tory. ]Many a sarcastic growl 
did the latter cast out — for Coventry had a rough 
spinous humour — at the political confederates of his 
associate, which rebounded from the gentle bosom of 
the latter like cannon-balls from wool. You could not 
ruffle Samuel Salt. 

S. had the reputation of being a very clever man, 
and of excellent discernment in the chamber practice 
of the law. I suspect his knowledge did not amount 
to much. When a case of difficult disposition of 
money, testamentary or otherwise, came before him, 
he ordinarily handed it over, with a few instructions, 
to his man Level, who was a quick little fellow, and 
would despatch it out of hand by the light of natural 
understanding, of which he had an uncommon share. 
It was incredible what repute for talents S. enjoyed 
by the mere trick of gravity. He was a shy man ; a 
child might pose him in a minute — Indolent and pro- 
crastinatlno- to the last deo^ree. Yet men would o^Ive 
him credit for vast application, in spite of himself. 
He was not to be trusted with himself with impunity. 



loS The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 

He never dressed for a dinner party but he forgot 
his sword — they wore swords then — or some other 
necessary part of his equipage. Lovel had his eye 
upon him on all these occasions, and ordinarily gave 
him his cue. If there was anything which he could 
speak unseasonably, he was sure to do it. — He was 
to dine at a relative's of the unfortunate Miss Blandy 
on the day of her execution ; — and L., who had a 
wary foresight of his probable hallucinations, before 
he set out schooled him, with great anxiety, not in 
any possible manner to allude to her story that day. 
S. promised faithfully to observe the injunction. He 
had not been seated In the parlour, where the com- 
pany was expecting the dinner summons, four minutes, 
when, a pause in the conversation ensuing, he got up, 
looked out of window, and pulling down his ruffles — - 
an ordinary motion with him — observed, '' it was a 
gloomy day," and added, " Miss Blandy must be 
hanged by this time, I suppose." Instances of this 
sort are perpetual. Yet S. was thought by some of 
the greatest men of his time a fit person to be con- 
sulted, not alone in matters pertaining to the law, 



The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 109 



but in the ordinary niceties and embarrassments of 
conduct — from force of manner entirely. He never 
laughed. He had the same good fortune among the 
female world, — was a known toast with the ladies^ 
and one or two are said to have died for love of 
him — I suppose, because he never trifled or talked 
gallantly with them, or paid them, indeed, hardly 
common attentions. He had a fine face and person, 
but wanted, methought, the spirit that should have 
shown them off with advantage to the women. His 

eye lacked lustre. — Xot so thought Susan P ; 

who, at the advanced age of sixty, was seen, in the 
cold evening time, unaccompanied, wetting the pave- 
ment of B d Row, with tears that fell in drops 

which might be heard, because her friend had died 
that day — he, whom she had pursued with a hope- 
less passion for the last forty years^a passion 
which years could not extinguish or abate ; nor the 
long-resolved, yet gently-enforced, puttings-off of 
unrelenting bachelorhood dissuade from its cherished 

purpose. INIild Susan P , thou hast now thy 

friend in heaven ! 



no The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 

Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble family 
'Of that name. He passed his youth in contracted 
circumstances, which gave him early those parsi- 
monious habits which in after life never forsook him : 
-SO that with one windfall or another, about the time 
I knew him, he was master of four or five hundred 
thousand pounds ; nor did he look or walk worth a 
moldore less. He lived in a gloomy house opposite 
the pump in Serjeant's - inn. Fleet-street. J., the 
counsel, is doing self-imposed penance in it, for what 
reason I divine not, at this day. C. had an agreeable 
seat at Xorth Cray, where he seldom spent above a 
•day or two at a time in the summer ; but preferred, 
-during the hot months, standing at his window in 
this damp, close, well-like mansion, to watch, as he 
said, "the maids drawing water all day long." I 
suspect he had his within-door reasons for the pre- 
ference. Hie cnrriLs et arma fnej-e. He might think 
his treasures more safe. His house had the aspect 
of a strong box. C. was a close hunks — a hoarder 
rather than a miser — or, if a miser, none of the mad 
Elwes breed, who have brought discredit upon a 



The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 1 1 1 

character which cannot exist without certain admirable 
points of steadiness and unity of purpose. One may 
hate a true miser, but cannot, I suspect, so easily 
despise him. By taking care of the pence he is often 
enabled to part with the pounds, upon a scale that 
leaves us careless generous fellows halting at an im- 
measurable distance behind. C. gave away 30,000/. 
at once in his lifetime to a blind charity. His house- 
keeping was severely looked after, but he kept the 
table of a gentleman. He would know who came 
In and who went out of his house, but his kitchen 
chimney was never suffered to freeze. 

Salt was his opposite in this, as in all — never 
knew what he was w^orth In the world ; and having 
but a competency for his rank, which his Indolent 
habits were little calculated to improve, might have 
suffered severely if he had not had honest people 
about him. Lovel took care of everything. He was 
at once his clerk, his good servant, his dresser, his 
friend, his ''flapper," his guide, stop-watch, auditor, 
treasurer. He did nothing without consulting Lovel, 
or failed in anything without expecting and fearing 



112 The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 

his admonishing. He put himself almost too much 
in his hands, had they not been the purest in the 
world. He resigned his title almost to respect 
as a master, if L. could ever have forgotton for a 
moment that he was a servant. 

I knew this Lovel. He was a man of incorrigible 
and losing honesty. A good fellow withal, and 
'* would strike." In the cause of the oppressed he 
never considered inequalities, or calculated the 
numbers of his opponents. He once wrested a 
sword out of the hand of a man of quality that had 
drawn upon him, and pommelled him severely with 
the hilt of it. The swordsman had offered insult to a 
female — an occasion upon which no odds against him 
could have prevented the interference of Lovel. He 
would stand next day bareheaded to the same person 
modestly to excuse his interference — for L. never 
forgot rank where something better was not con- 
cerned. L. was the liveliest little fellow breathing, 
had a face as gay as Garrick's, whom he Avas said 
greatly to resemble (I have a portrait of him which 
confirms it), possessed a fine turn for humorous 



The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 1 1 3 

poetry — next to Swift and Prior — moulded heads in 
clay and plaster of Paris to admiration, by the dint of 
natural genius merely ; turned cribbage boards, and 
such small cabinet toys, to perfection ; took a hand at 
quadrille or bowls with equal facility ; made punch 
better than any man of his degree in England ; had 
the merriest quips and conceits ; and was altogether 
as brimful of rogueries and inventions as you could 
desire. He was a brother of the angle, moreover, 
and just such a free, hearty, honest companion as 
Mr. Izaak Walton would have chosen to go a-fishing 
with. I saw him in his old age and the decay of 
his faculties palsy-smitten, in the last sad stage of 
human weakness — " a remnant most forlorn of 
what he was," — yet even then his eye would light 
up upon the mention of his favourite Garrick. 
He was greatest, he would say, in Bayes — '' was 
upon the stage nearly throughout the whole per- 
formance, and as busy as a bee." At intervals, too, 
he would speak of his former life, and how 
he came up a little boy from Lincoln, to go to 
service, and how his mother cried at parting with 

I 



114 ^^^^ O^d Benchers of the Inner Te^nple. 

him, and how he returned, after some few years' 
absence, in a smart new livery, to see her, and she 
blest herself at the change, and could hardly be 
brought to believe that it was "her own bairn." And 
then, the excitement subsiding, he would weep, till I 
have wished the sad second-childhood might have a 
mother still to lay its head upon her lap. But the 
common mother of us all in no long time after 
received him gently into hers. 

With Coventry and with Salt, in their walks upon 
the terrace, most commonly Peter Pierson would join 
to make up a third. They did not walk linked arm- 
in-arm in those days — " as now our stout triumvirs 
sweep the streets," — but generally with both hands 
folded behind them for state, or with one at least 
behind, the other carrying a cane. P. was a bene- 
volent, but not a prepossessing man. He had that 
in his face which you could not term unhappiness ; 
it rather implied an incapacity of being happy. 
His cheeks were colourless, even to whiteness. His 
look was uninviting, resembling (but without his 
sourness) that of our great philanthropist. I know 



The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 1 1 5 



that he did good acts, but I could never make out 
what he was. Contemporary with these, but subor- 
dinate, was Daines Barrington — another oddity — he 
walked burly and square — in Imitation, I think, of 
Coventry — howbeit he attained not to the dignity of 
his prototype. Nevertheless, he did pretty well, 
upon the strength of being a tolerable antiquarian, 
and having a brother a bishop. When the account 
of his year's treasurership came to be audited, the 
following singular charge was unanimously disallowed 
by the bench : " Item, disbursed Mr. Allen, the 
gardener, twenty shillings for stuff to poison the 
sparrows, by my orders." Next to him was old 
Barton — a jolly negation, who took upon him the 
ordering of the bills of fare for the parliament 
chamber, where the benchers dine — answering to 
the combination rooms at College — much to the 
easement of his less epicurean brethren. I know 
nothing more of him. — Then Read, and Twopeny — 
Read, good-humoured and personable — Twopeny, 
good-humoured, but thin, and felicitous In jests 
upon his own figure. If T. was thin, Wharry was 

I 2 



1 1 6 TJie Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 



attenuated and fleeting. Many must remember him 
(for he was rather of later date) and his singular 
gait, which was performed by three steps and a 
jump regularly succeeding. The steps were little 
efforts, like that of a child beginning to walk ; the 
jump comparatively vigorous, as a foot to an inch. 
Where he learned this figure, or what occasioned 
it, I could never discover. It was neither graceful 
in Itself, nor seemed to answer the purpose any 
better than common walking. The extreme tenuity 
of his frame, I suspect, set him upon it. It was a 
trial of poising. Twopeny would often rally him 
upon his leanness, and hail him as Brother Lusty ; 
but W. had no relish of a joke. His features were 
spiteful. I have heard that he would pinch his 
cat's ears extremely when anything had offended 
him. Jackson — the omniscient Jackson, he was 
called — was of this period. He had the reputation 
of possessing more multifarious knowledge than any 
man of his time. He was the Friar Bacon of the 
less literate portion of the Temple. I remember a 
pleasant passage of the cook applying to him, with 



The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 1 1 ; 



much formality of apology, for instructions how to 
write down edge bone of beef in the bill of 
commons. He was supposed to know, if any man 
in the world did. He decided the orthography to 
be — as I have given it — fortifying his authority with 
such anatomical reasons as dismissed the manciple 
(for the time) learned and happy. Some do spell 
it yet, perversely, aitch bone, from a fanciful resem- 
blance between its shape and that of the aspirate so 
denominated. I had almost forgotten ^Nlingay with the 
iron hand — but he was somewhat later. He had lost 
his right hand by some accident, and supplied it with 
a grappling-hook, which he wielded with a tolerable 
adroitness. I detected the substitute before I was 
old enough to reason whether it were artificial or 
not. I remember the astonishment it raised in 
me. He was a blustering, loud-talking person ; and 
I reconciled the phenomenon to my ideas as an 
emblem of power — somewhat like the horns in the 
forehead of ^lichael Angelo's Moses. Baron INIaseres, 
who walks (or did till very lately) in the costume 
of the reign of George the Second, closes my 



1 1 8 The Old Benchers of the hmer Temple. 

imperfect recollections of the old benchers of the 
Inner Temple. 

Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled ? Or, if the 
like of you exist, why exist they no more for me ? 
Ye inexplicable, half-understood appearances, why 
comes in reason to tear away the preternatural mist, 
bright or gloomy, that enshrouded you ? Why make 
ye so sorry a figure in my relation, who made up to 
me — to my childish eyes — the mythology of the 
Temple ? In those days I saw Gods, as '' old men 
covered with a mantle," walking upon the earth. 
Let the dream of classic idolatry perish, — extinct be 
the fairies and fairy trumpery of legendary fabling, 
in the heart of childhood there will, for ever, spring 
up a well of innocent or wholesome superstition — the 
seeds of exaggeration will be busy there, and vital — 
from everyday forms educing the unknown and the 
uncommon. In that little Goshen there will be 
light when the grown world flounders about In the 
darkness of sense and materiality. While childhood, 
and while dreams, reducing childhood, shall be left, 



The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple. 1 1 9 

imagination shall not have spread her holy wings 
totally to fly the earth. 

P.S. — I have done injustice to the soft shade of 
Samuel Salt. See what it is to trust to imperfect 
memor}', and the erring notices of childhood ! Yet I 
protest I always thought that he had been a bachelor ! 
This gentleman, R. N. informs me, married young, 
and losing his lady in childbed, within the first year 
of their union, fell into a deep melancholy, from the 
effects of which, probably, he never thoroughly re- 
covered. In what a new light does this place his 
rejection (O call it by a gentler name !) of mild Susan 

P , unravelling into beauty certain peculiarities 

of this very shy and retiring character ! Henceforth 
let no one receive the narratives of Ella for true 
records ! They are, In truth, but shadows of fact 
— verisimilitudes, not verities — or sitting but upon 
the remote edges and outskirts of history. He Is no 
such honest chronicler as R. N., and would have 
done better perhaps to have consulted that gentleman 
before he sent these Incondite reminiscences to press. 



I20 The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple, 



But the worthy sub-treasurer — who respects his old 
and new masters — would but have been puzzled at 
the indecorous liberties of Elia. The good man wots 
not, peradventure, of the licence which Magazines 
have arrived at in this plain-speaking age, or hardly 
dreams of their existence beyond the Gentleman s — 
his furthest monthly excursions in this nature having 
been long confined to the holy ground of honest 
Urban s obituary. May it be long before his own 
name shall help to swell those columns of unenvied 
flattery ! — Meantime, O ye New Benchers of the 
Inner Temple, cherish him kindly, for he is himself 
the kindliest of human creatures. Should infirmities 
overtake him — he is yet in green and vigorous 
senility — make allowances for them, remembering 
that " ye yourselves are old." So may the Winged 
Horse, your ancient badge and cognizance, still 
flourish ! so may future Hookers and Seldens illus- 
trate your church and chambers ! so may the 
sparrows, in default of more melodious quiristers, 
unpoisoned hop about your walks ! so may the fresh- 
coloured and cleanly nursery-maid, who, by leave, 



The Old Benchei's of the Inne^^ Temple. 1 2 1 

airs her playful charge In ^^our stately gardens, drop 
her prettiest blushing courtesy as ye pass, reductive 
of juvenescent emotion ! so may the younkers of this 
generation eye you, pacing your stately terrace, with 
the same superstitious veneration with which the 
child Ella gazed on the Old Worthies that solemnized 
the parade before ye ! 





Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend 
M. was obHging enough to read and explain to me, 
for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat 
raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just 
as they do in Abyssinia to this day. This period 
is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius 
in the second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, 
where he designates a kind of golden age by the 
term Cho-fang, literally the Cooks' Holiday. The 
manuscript goes on to say, that the art of roasting, 
or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder 
brother), was accidentally discovered in the manner 
following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti, having gone out 



A Dissertation ttpon Roast Pig. 



12 - 



into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to 

collect mast for his hogs, 
left his cottage in the care 
of his eldest son Bo-bo, a 
great lubberly boy, who 
being fond of playing with 
fire, as younkers of his age 
commonly are, let some 
sparks escape into a bundle 
of straw, which kindling 
quickly, spread the confla- 
gration over every part of 
their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. 
Together with the cottage (a 
sorry antediluvian make-shift of 
a building, you may think it), 
what was of much more im- 
portance, a fine litter of new- 
farrowed pigs, no less than nine 
in number, perished. China pigs 
have been esteemed a luxury all 
over the East, from the remotest periods that we 




*' Gone out into the woods one morning.'" 




124 



A Dissertation npon Roast Pig 



read of. Bo-bo was In the utmost consternation, 
as you may think, not so much for the sake of the 
tenement, which his father and he could easily build 
up again with a few dry branches, and the labour 
of an hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of 

the pigs. While he was 
thinking what he should 
say to his father, and 
wringing his hands over 
the smoking remnants of 
one of those untimely 
sufferers, an odour as- 
sailed his nostrils, unlike 
any scent which he had 
before experienced. What 
could it proceed from ? — 
not from the burnt cot- 
tage — he had smelt that smell before — indeed, 
this was by no means the first accident of the kind 
which had occurred through the negligence of this 
unlucky young firebrand. Much less did it resemble 
that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A pre- 




"Bo-bo was in the ittJiiost cojisterriation.'' 



A Dissertation upoji Roast Pig. 



12- 



monitory moistening at 




' A premonitory vioistening at the saji, 
time over/lowed his nether lip." 



and for the first time in 
indeed, for be- 
fore him no 
man had known 
it) he tasted — 
crackling! Again 
he felt and fum- 
bled at the pig. 
It did not burn 
him so much now, still 



the same time overflowed 
his nether lip. He knew 
not what to think. He 
next stooped down to feel 
the pig, if there were any 
signs of life in it. He 
burnt his fingers, and to 
cool them he applied them 
in his booby fashion to his 
mouth. Some of the crumbs 
of the scorched skin had 
come away with his fingers, 

his life (in the world's life, 




He next stooped dowii to feel the pig." 

he licked his finorers from 



126 



A Dissertation npon Roast Pig. 




'He burnt his fingers." 



a sort of habit. The truth at 
length broke into his slow under- 
standing, that it was the pig that 
smelt so, and the pig that tasted 
so delicious ; and surrendering 
himself up to the new-born plea- 
sure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the 
scorched skin with 
the flesh next it, 
and was cramming 
it down his throat 
in his beastly 
fashion, when his 
sire entered amid 
the smoking raft- 
ers, armed with 
retributory cudgel, 
and finding how 
affairs stood, be- 
gan to rain blows 
upon the young _,_=_-^^-_^_^ ^^- 

rOgUe's shoulders, '^ Armed with re-ributory cudgel." 




A Dissertation upon Roast Pig. 127 



as thick as hail-stones, which Bo-bo heeded not any 
more than if they had been flies. The tickling- 
pleasure, which he experienced in his lower regions, 
had rendered him quite callous to any inconveniences 
he might feel in those remote quarters. His father 
might lay on, but he could not beat him from his 
pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, 
becoming a little more sensible of his situation, 
something^ like the followino^ dialoQ^ue ensued. 

" You graceless whelp, what have you got there 
devouring ? Is it not enough that you have burnt 
me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and 
be hanged to you ! but you must be eating fire, 
and I know not what — what have you got there, 
I say ? " 

" O father, the pig, the pig ! do come and taste 
how nice the burnt pig eats." 

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He 
cursed his son, and he cursed himself that ever he 
should beget a son that should eat burnt pig. 

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened 
since morning, soon raked out another pig, and 



128 



A Dissertation ttpon Roast Pig. 



fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by 
main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, 

" Eat, eat, eat the burnt 
pig, father, only taste — 
O Lord ! " — with such- 
like barbarous ejacula- 
tions, cramming all the 
while as if he would 
choke. 

Ho-ti trembled every 
joint while he grasped 
the abominable thing, 
wavering whether he 
should not put his son 
to death for an unnatural young monster, when the 
crackling scorching his fingers, as it had done his 
sons, and applying the same remedy to them, 
he in his turn tasted some of its flavour, which, 
make what sour mouths he would for a pretence, 
proved not altogether displeasing to him. In con- 
■clusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious), 
both father and son fairly set down to the mess, and 




" Ho-ti trejuhled ez'ery joint." 



A Dissertation upon Roast Pig. 



129 



never left off till they had despatched all that re- 
mained of the litter. 

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret 
escape, for the neighbours would certainly have 
stoned them for a couple of abominable wretches, 
who could think of improving upon the good meat 
which God had sent 
them. Nevertheless, 
strange stories got 
about. It was ob- 
served that Ho-ti's 
cottage was burnt 
down now more fre- 
quently than ever. 
Nothing but fires 
from this time for- 
ward. Some would 
break out in broad 
day, others in the 
night-time. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure 
was the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze ; and Ho-ti 
himself, which was the more remarkable, instead of 

K 




r strictly otjoi/ied not to tell the secret." 



130 A Dissertation upon Roast Pig. 

chastising his son, seemed to grow more indulgent 
to him than ever. At length they were watched, 




" Ho-ii's cottage was hiirned dozu/i more frequently than ever. 



the terrible mystery discovered, and father and son 
summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an 
inconsiderable assize town. Evidence was given, 
the obnoxious food itself produced in court, and 
verdict about to be pronounced, when the foreman 
of the jury begged that some of the burnt pig, of 
which the culprits stood accused, might be handed 



A Dissertation upon Roast Pig. 



into the box. He handled it, and they all handled 
It ; and burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father 
had done before them, and 
nature prompting to each 
of them the same remedy, 
against the face of all the 
facts, and the clearest 
charge which judge had 
ever given — to the sur- 
prise of the whole court, 
townsfolk, strangers, re- 
porters, and all present — 
without leaving the box, 
or any manner of con- 
sultation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous 
verdict of Not Guilty. 

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at 
the manifest iniquity of the decision : and when the 
court was dismissed, went privily and bought up all 
the pigs that could be had for love or money. In 
a few days his lordship's town house was observed 
to be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there 




' The judge, ivho -Mas a shrewd ydlcnv, 
iL'inked." 



132 



A Dissertation upon Roast Pig 




was nothing to be seen but 

fires in every direction. Fuel 

and pigs grew enormously 

dear all over the district. 

The insurance-offices one and 

all shut up shop. People 

built slighter and slighter 

every day, until it was feared 

that the very science of ar- 
chitecture would in no long 

time be lost to the world. 

Thus this custom of firing 

houses continued, till in process of time, says my 
manuscript, a sage arose, like 
our Locke, who made a dis- 
covery that the flesh of swine, 
or indeed of any other animal, 
might be cooked (bnrnt, as they 
called it) without the necessity 
of consuming a whole house to 
dress it. Then first began the 
-Made a discovery." ^ude form of a gridirou. Roasting 



' hi process of time, a sage arose." 




A Dissertation tip on Roast Pig. 



^?>Z 



by the string or spit came in a century or two later, 
I forget in whose dynasty. By such slow degrees, 
concludes the manuscript, do the most useful, and 
seemingly the most obvious, arts make their way 
among mankind 



Without placing too implicit faith in the account 
above given, it must be agreed that if a worthy 
pretext for so 
dangerous an ex- 
periment as set- 
ting houses on 
fire (especially in 
these days) could 
be assigned in 
favour of any culi- 
nary object, that 
pretext and excuse might be found in roast pig. 

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus cdibilis, 
I will maintain it to be the most delicate— /r/;/^^/'^ 
obsoniorum. 

I speak not of your grown porkers — things between 
pig and pork — those hobbledehoys — but a young and 




the rude for)n of a gridiron.' 



134 



A Dissertation itpon Roast Pig. 




'A yozmg attd tender 
siickltng." 



tender suckling — under a moon old — guiltless as yet 
of the sty, with no original speck of the amor im- 
immditicB, the hereditary failing of the 
first parent, yet manifest, his voice as 
yet not broken, but something be- 
tween a childish treble and a grumble 
— the mild forerunner or prceliLciiiim 
of a grunt. 

He imist be 7'oasted. I am not ig- 
norant that our ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled 
— but what a sacrifice of the exterior tegument ! 

There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to 
that of the crisp, 
tawny, well- 
watched, not over- 
roasted ci'ackling, 
as it is well called ; 
the very teeth are 
invited to their 
share of the plea- 
sure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle 
resistance — with the adhesive oleao^inous — O call it 




"///j voice as yet not broken." 



A Dissertation tipon Roast Pig. 



not fat ! but an indefinable sweetness growing up to 
it — the tender blossoming of fat — fat cropped in the 
bud — taken in the shoot — in the first innocence — 
the cream and quint- 
essence of the child- 
pig's yet pure food — 
the lean, no lean, but a 
kind of animal manna, 
or rather, fat and lean 
(if it must be so) so 
blended and running 

" Matnrer swinehood.'^ 

into each other, that 

both together make but one ambrosian result or 

common substance. 

Behold him while he is "doinpf" ; it seemeth rather 
a refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he 
is so passive to. How equably he twirleth -round 
the string ! Now he is just done. To see the 
extreme sensibility of that tender age ! he hath wept 
out his pretty eyes — radiant jellies — shooting stars. 

See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek 
he lieth ! — wouldst thou have had this innocent grow 




A Dissei^tation tip on Roast Pig. 



up to the grossness and indocility which too often 
accompany maturer swinehood ? Ten to one he 
would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, 
disagreeable animal — wallowing in all manner of 
filthy conversation ; from these sins he is happily 
snatched away 

Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, 
Death came with timely care — 



His memory is odoriferous. No clown curseth, while 

his stomach half reject- 
eth, the rank bacon — no 
coalheaver bolteth him 
in reeking sausages ; he 
hath a fair sepulchre in 
the grateful stomach of 
the judicious epicure, 
and for such a tomb 
might be content to die. 
He is the best of sa- 

" His stomach half rejccteth the rank iaco7i." nnr^ PinPPnnlp 1^; OTPat 

She is indeed almost too transcendent — a delight, 




A Dissertation upon Roast Pig. 137 

if not sinful, yet so like to sinning, that really a 
tender-conscienced person might do well to pause — 
too ravishing for mortal taste, she woundeth and 
excoriateth the lips that approach her — like lovers' 
kisses, she biteth — she is a pleasure bordering on 
pain from the fierceness and insanity of her relish 
— but she stoppeth at the palate — she meddleth 
not with the appetite — and the coarsest hunger might 
barter her consistently for a mutton-chop. 

Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less provocative 
of the appetite than he is satisfactory to the critical- 
ness of the censorious palate. The strong man may 
batten on him, and the weakling refuseth not his 
mild juices. 

Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle 
of virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and 
not to be unravelled without hazard, he is — good 
throughout. No part of him is better or worse than 
another. He helpeth, as far as his little means 
extend, all around. He is the least envious of 
banquets. He is all neighbours' fare. 

I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly 



138 



A Dissertation upon Roast Pig 



impart a share of the good things of this Hfe which 
fall to their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a 
friend. I protest I take as great an interest in my 
friend's pleasures, his relishes, and proper satisfactions, 
as in mine own. " Presents," I often say, '* endear 
Absents." Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn- 
door chickens (those ''tame villatic fowl"), capons, 
plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dispense as 
freely as I receive them. I love to taste them, as 




"He is all 7teighbojirs'' fai-e^ 



it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But a stop 
must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear, 
''give everything." I make my stand upon pig. 



A Dissertation upon Roast Pig. 



139 



Methlnks It Is an Ingratitude to the Giver of all 
good flavours to extra-domlcillate, or send out of the 
house slightingly (under pretext of friendship, or I 
know not what) a blessing so particularly adapted, 
predestined, I may say, 
to my individual palate. 
— It argues an insen- 
sibility. 

I remember a touch 
of conscience In this 
kind at. school. My 
good old aunt, who 
never parted from me 
at the end of a holiday 
without stuffing a sweet- 
meat, or some nice thing, 
into my pocket, had 
dismissed me one evening with a smoking plum- 
cake, fresh from the oven. In my way to school 
(it was over London Bridge) a grey-headed old 
beggar saluted me (I have no doubt, at this time 
of day, that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence 




' One would ttoi, like Lear, give everything; 



140 



A Dissertation 7tpoii Roast Pig. 




'/ Jiiade him a ^rese?it of the -vhole cake." 



to console him with, 

and in the vanity of 

self-denial, and the 

very coxcombry of 

charity, school - boy 

like, I made him a 

present of — the whole 

cake ! I walked on 

a little, buoyed up, 

as one is on such 

occasions, with a 

sweet soothing of self-satisfaction ; but, before I had 
got to the end of the bridge, my 
better feelings returned, and I 
burst into tears, thinking how 
ungrateful I had been to my 
good aunt, to go and give her 
good gift away to a stranger 
that I had never seen before, 
and who might be a bad man 
for aught I knew ; and then I 

"My teiier feelings returned:' thoUght of the pleaSUre my 




A Dissertation np07i Roast Pig. 



141 




aunt would be taking in thinking that I — I myself, 
and not another — would eat her nice cake — and 
what should I say 
to her the next 
time I saw her 
— how naughty I 
was to part with 
her pretty present ! 
— and the odour 
of that spicy cake 
came back upon 
my recollection, 

and the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken in 
seeing her make it, and her joy when she sent it 
to the oven, and how disappointed she would feel 
that I had never had a bit of it in my mouth at 
last — and I blamed my impertinent spirit of alms- 
giving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of goodness ; and 
above all I wished never to see the face again of 
that insidious, good-for-nothing, old grey impostor. 

Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacri- 
ficing these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt 



' Hoxv naughty I zvas to part zuith. Jier pretty present.'' 



142 



A Dissertation upon Roast Pig. 



to death with something of a shock, as we hear of 
any other obsolete custom. The age of discipline 
is gone by, or it would be curious to inquire (in 
a philosophical light merely) what effect this process 




* It might impart a gusto.'" 



might have towards intenerating and dulcifying a 
substance, naturally so mild and dulcet as the flesh 
of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. 



A Dissertation 7Lpon Roast Pig, 



143 



Yet we should be cautious, while we condemn 
the inhumanity, how we censure the 
wisdom of the practice. It might 
impart a gusto. 

I remember an hypothesis, argued 
upon by the young students, when 
I was at St. Omer's, and maintained 
with much learning and pleasantry on 
both sides, "Whether, supposing that 
the flavour of a pig who obtained his 
death by whipping {per Jiagellationem 
extremam) superadded a pleasure upon 
the palate of a man more intense than 
any possible suffering we can conceive 
in the animal, is man justified in 
using that method of putting the 
animal to death ? " I forget the de- 
cision. 

His sauce should be considered. 
Decidedly, a few bread-crumbs, done 
up with his liver and brains, and a ''"'I'^elm;'"'" 
dash of mild sage. But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, 



144 



A Disse7Hatio7i 2tpon Roast Pig. 



I beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue 
your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in 
shalots, stuff them out with plantations of the 
rank and guilty garlic ; you cannot poison them, or 
make them stronger than they are — but consider, he 
is a weakling — a flower. 





y^Tir^lPl^, 



At the north end of Cross-court there yet stands a 
portal, of some architectural pretensions, though 
reduced to humble use, serving at present for an 
entrance to a printing-office. This old doorway, if 
you are young, reader, you may not know was the 
identical pit entrance to old Drury — Garrlck's 
Drury — all of it that is left. I never pass it with- 
out shaking some forty years from off my shoulders, 
recurring to the evening when I passed through it 

L 



146 My First Play. 



to see my first play. The afternoon had been wet, 
and the condition of our going (the elder folks and 
myself) was, that the rain should cease. With what 
a beating heart did I watch from the window the 
puddles, from the stillness of which I was taught 
to prognosticate the desired cessation ! I seem to 
remember the last spurt, and the glee with which I 
ran to announce it. 

We went with orders, which my godfather F. 
had sent us. He kept the oil shop (now Davies's) 
at the corner of Featherstone-buildings, in Holborn. 
F. was a tall grave person, lofty in speech, and had 
pretensions above his rank. He associated in those 
days with John Palmer, the comedian, whose gait and 
bearing he seemed to copy ; if John (which is quite 
as likely) did not rather borrow somewhat of his 
manner from my godfather. He was also known 
to and visited by Sheridan. It was to his house in 
Holborn that young Brinsley brought his first wife 
on her elopement with him from a boarding-school 
at Bath — the beautiful Maria Linley. My parents 
were present (over a quadrille table) when he 



My First Play. 147 



arrived in the evening with his harmonious charge. 
From either of these connections it may be Inferred 
that my godfather could command an order for the 
then Drury Lane theatre at pleasure — and, indeed, 
a pretty liberal Issue of those cheap billets, in 
Brinsley's easy autograph, I have heard him say 
was the sole remuneration which he had received 
for many years' nightly illumination of the orchestra 
and various avenues of that theatre — and he was 
content It should be so. The honour of Sheridan's 
familiarity — or supposed familiarity — was better to 
my godfather than money. 

F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen ; grandilo- 
quent, yet courteous. His delivery of the com- 
monest matters of fact was Ciceronian. He had 
two Latin words almost constantly In his mouth 
(how odd sounds Latin from an oilman's lips ! ), 
which my better knowledge since has enabled me 
to correct. In strict pronunciation they should have 
been sounded vice versa — but In those young years 
they Impressed me with more awe than they would 
now do, read aright from Seneca or Varro — in his 

L 2 



148 My First Play. 



own peculiar pronunciation, monosyllabically elabo- 
rated, or Anglicised, into something like ve7^se verse. 
By an imposing manner, and the help of these 
distorted syllables, he climbed (but that was little) 
to the highest parochial honours which St. Andrew's 
has to bestow. 

He is dead — and thus much I thought due to his 
memory, both for my first orders (little wondrous 
talismans ! slight keys, and insignificant to outward 
sight, but opening to me more than Arabian 
paradises ! ) and, moreover, that by his testamentary 
beneficence I came into possession of the only 
landed property which I could ever call my own 
— situate near the road-way village of pleasant 
Puckeridge, in Hertfordshire. When I journeyed 
down to take possession, and planted foot on my own 
ground, the stately habits of the donor descended 
upon me, and I strode (shall I confess the vanity ?) 
with larger paces over my allotment of three 
quarters of an acre, with its commodious mansion 
in the midst, with the feeling of an English free- 
holder that all betwixt sky and centre was my own. 



My First Play. 149 



The estate has passed into more prudent hands, and 
nothing but an agrarian can restore it. 

In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the un- 
comfortable manager who aboHshed them ! — with 
one of these we went. I remember the waiting at 
the door — not that which is left — but between that 
and an inner door in shelter — O when shall I be 
such an expectant again ! — with the cry of nonpareils, 
an indispensable play-house accompaniment in those 
days. As near as I can recollect, the fashionable 
pronunciation of the theatrical fruiteresses then was, 
" Chase some oranges, chase some numparels, chase 
a bill of the play ; " — chase pro chuse. But when 
we got in, and I beheld the green curtain that 
veiled a heaven to my imagination, which was soon 
to be disclosed — the breathless anticipations I en- 
dured ! I had seen something like it in the plate 
prefixed to Troilus and Cressida, in Rowe's Shaks- 
peare — the tent scene with Diomede — and a sight 
of that plate can always bring back in a measure 
the feeling of that evening. The boxes at that 
time, full of well-dressed women of quality, projected 



150 My First Play. 



over the pit ; and the pilasters reaching down were 
adorned with a glistening substance (I know not 
what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling — a 
homely fancy — but I judged it to be sugar-candy — 
yet to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier 
qualities, it appeared a glorified candy ! The or- 
chestra lights at length rose, those fair '' Auroras ! " 
Once the bell sounded. It was to ring out yet 
once again — and, incapable of the anticipation, I 
reposed my shut eyes in a sort of resignation upon 
the maternal lap. It rang the second time. The 
curtain drew up — I was not past six years old, and 
the play was Artaxerxes ! 

I had dabbled a little in the Universal History 
—the ancient part of it — and here was the court of 
Persia. It was being admitted to a sight of the 
past. I took no proper interest in the action going 
on, for I understood not its import — but I heard 
the word Darius, and I was in the midst of Daniel. 
All feelinof was absorbed in vision. Gororeous vests, 
gardens, palaces, princesses, passed before me. I 
knew not players. I was in Persepolis for the 



J/y First Play. 151 



time, and the burning idol of their devotion almost 
converted me into a worshipper. I was awestruck, 
and believed those signihcations to be something 
more than elemental fires. It was all enchantment 
and a dream. Xo such pleasure has since visited 
me but in dreams. Harlequin's invasion followed ; 
where, I remember, the transformation of the 
magistrates into reverend beldams seemed to me a 
piece of grave historic justice, and the tailor carry- 
ing his own head to be as sober a verity as the 
legend of St. Denys. 

The next play to which I was taken was the 
Lady of the [Manor, of which, with the exception 
of some scener}', very faint traces are left in my 
memory. It was followed by a pantomime, called 
Lun's Ghost — a satiric touch, I apprehend, upon 
Rich, not long since dead — but to my apprehension 
(too sincere for satire), Lun was as remote a piece 
of antiquity as Lud — the father of a line of 
Harlequins — transmitting his dagger of lath (the 
wooden sceptre) through countless ages. I saw the 
primeval Motley come from his silent tomb in a 



152 My First Play. 



ghastly vest of white patchwork, Hke the apparition 
of a dead rainbow. So Harlequins (thought I) look 
when they are dead. 

My third play followed in quick succession. It 
was The Way of the World. I think I must have 
sat at it as grave as a judge ; for I remember the 
hysteric affectations of good Lady Wishfort affected 
me like some solemn tragic passion. Robinson 
Crusoe followed ; in which Crusoe, man Friday, and 
the parrot, were as good and authentic as in the 
story. The clownery and pantaloonery of these 
pantomimes have clean passed out of my head. I 
believe, I no more laughed at them, than at the 
same age I should have been disposed to laugh at 
the grotesque Gothic heads (seeming to me then 
replete with devout meaning) that gape and grin 
in stone around the inside of the old Round Church 
(my church) of the Templars. 

I saw these plays in the season 178 1-2, when I 
was six to seven years old. After the intervention 
of six or seven other years (for at school all play- 
going was inhibited) I again entered the doors of a 



My First Play. 153 



theatre. That old Artaxerxes evening had never 
done ringing in my fancy. I expected the same 
feelings to come again with the same occasion. But 
we differ from ourselves less at sixty and sixteen, 
than the latter does from six. In that interval 
what had I not lost ! At the first period I knew 
nothing, understood nothing, discriminated nothing. 
I felt all, loved all, wondered all — 

Was nourished, I could not tell how — 

I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned 
a rationalist. The same things were there materially ; 
but the emblem, the reference, was gone ! The green 
curtain was no longer a veil, drawn between two 
worlds, the unfolding of which was to bring back 
past ages, to present a "royal ghost," — but a certain 
quantity of green baize, which was to separate the 
audience for a given time from certain of their fellow- 
men who were to come forward and pretend those 
parts. The lights — the orchestra lights — came up a 
clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the second 
ring, was now but a trick of the prompter's bell — which 



154 My First Play. 



had been, like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom 
of a voice, no hand seen or guessed at which 
ministered to its warning. The actors were men and 
women painted. I thought the fault was in them ; 
but it was in myself, and the alteration which 
those many centuries — of six short twelvemonths — 
had wrought in me. Perhaps it was fortunate for 
me that the play of the evening was but an in- 
different comedy, as it gave me time to crop some 
unreasonable expectations, which might have in- 
terfered with the genuine emotions with which I 
was soon after enabled to enter upon the first 
appearance to me of Mrs. Siddons in Isabella. 
Comparison and retrospection soon yielded to the 
present attraction of the scene ; and the theatre 
became to me, upon a new stock, the most delight- 
ful of recreations. 




A POOR RELATION — IS the most irrelevant thing in 
nature, — a piece of impertinent correspondency, — an 
odious approximation, — a haunting conscience, — a 
preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide 
of our prosperity, — an unwelcome remembrancer, — a 
perpetually recurring mortification, — a drain on your 
purse, — a more intolerable dun upon your pride,— a 
drawback upon success, — a rebuke to your rising, — 
a stain in your blood, — a blot on your 'scutcheon, — 
a rent in your garment, — a death's head at your 
banquet, — Agathocles' pot, — a Mordecai in your 
gate, — a Lazarus at your door, — a lion in your 
path, — a frog in your chamber, — a fly in your 



156 



Poor Relations. 



ointment, — a mote in your eye, — a triumph to your 
enemy, — an apology to your friends, — the one 
thing not needful, — the hail in harvest, — the ounce 
of sour in a pound of sweet. 

He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth 
you "That is Mr.- ." A rap, between fami- 
liarity and respect ; that demands, and at the same 
time seems to despair of, entertainment. He 
entereth smiling and — embarrassed. He holdeth 

out his hand to you 
to shake, and — draweth 
it back again. He 
casually looketh in 
about dinner -time — 
when the table is full. 
He offereth to go away, 
seeing you have com- 
pany — but is induced 
to stay. He filleth a 
chair, and your visitor s 

" He e7ttereth S77ji:i7ig and^oiibarrassed" i -i i 

two children are ac- 
commodated at a side-table. He never cometh 




Poor Relations. 157 



upon open days, when your wife says, with some 

complacency, " My dear, perhaps Mr. will drop 

in to-day." He remembereth birth-days — and pro- 
fesseth he is fortunate to have stumbled upon one. 
He declareth against fish, the turbot being small — 
yet suffereth himself to be importuned into a slice, 
against his first resolution. He sticketh by the 
port — yet will be prevailed upon to empty the 
remainder glass of claret, if a stranger press it 
upon him. He is a puzzle to the servants, who 
are fearful of being too obsequious, or not civil 
enough, to him. The guests think " they have 
seen him before." Every one speculateth upon his 
condition ; and the most part take him to be a— 
tide-waiter. He calleth you by your Christian 
name, to imply that his other is the same with 
your own. He is too familiar by half, yet you 
wish he had less diffidence. With -half the 
familiarity, he might pass for a casual dependent ; 
with more boldness, he would be in no danger of 
being taken for what he is. He is too humble for 
a friend ; yet taketh on him more state than befits 



158 



Poor Relations, 



a client. He is a worse guest than a country 
tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent — yet 
'tis odds, from his garb and demeanour, that your 




" The gicests tki?ik ' ihey have seen him be/ore. 



guests take him for one. He is asked to make 
one at the whist table ; refuseth on the score of 
poverty, and — resents being left out. When the 
company break up, he proffereth to go for a coach 
— and lets the servant go. He recollects your 
grandfather ; and will thrust in some mean and 
quite unimportant anecdote — of the family. He 
knew it when it was not quite so flourishing as 



Poor Relations. 



159 



''he is blest In seeing it now." He reviveth past 
situations, to institute what he calleth — favourable 
comparisons. With a reflecting sort of congratula- 



,..,|;i;wM:.|;.!f'l^ ^^,,i|;ji , 




"A spcci.il co:ii)iie/idation 0/ your %oindo-jj-c7a tains." 

tlon, he will Inquire the price of your furniture ; and 
insults you with a special commendation of your 
window-curtains. He Is of opinion that the urn is 
the more elegant shape ; but, after all, there was 



i6o Poor Relations. 



something more comfortable about the old tea-kettle 
— which you must remember. He dare say you 
must find a great convenience in having a carriage 
of your own, and appealeth to your lady if it is not 
so. Inquireth if you have had your arms done on 
vellum yet ; and did not know, till lately, that such- 
and-such had been the crest of the family. His 
memory is unseasonable ; his compliments perverse ; 
his talk a trouble ; his stay pertinacious ; and when 
he goeth away, you dismiss his chair into a corner 
as precipitately as possible, and feel fairly rid of 
two nuisances. 

There is a worse evil under the sun, and that 
is —a female Poor Relation. You may do something 
with the other ; you may pass him off tolerably 
well ; but your indigent she-relative is hopeless. 
*' He is an old humourist," you may say, " and 
affects to go threadbare. His circumstances are 
better than folks would take them to be. You are 
fond of having a Character at your table, and truly 
he is one." But in the indications of female poverty 
there can be no disguise. No woman dresses 



Poor Relations. 



i6i 



below herself from caprice. The truth must out 
without shuffling. '' She is plainly related to the 

L 's ; or what does she at their house?" She 

is, in all probability, your wife's cousin. Nine 
times out of ten, at least, this is the case. Her 
garb is something between a gentlewoman and a 
beggar, yet the former evidently predominates. She 
is most provokingly humble, and ostentatiously 
sensible to her inferiority. He may require to be 
repressed sometimes 
— aliquaitdo sttfflami- 
nandus erat — but 
there is no raising 
her. You send her 
soup at dinner, and 
she begs to be helped 
— after the gentle- 
men. Mr. re- 
quests the honour of 

taking wine with " Bc^s to he helped— a/lcr the gentlcmenr 

her ; she hesitates between Port and Madeira, and 
chooses the former — because he does. She calls 




1 62 Poor Relations, 



the servant Sir ; and insists on not troubling him 
to hold her plate. The housekeeper patronises her. 
The children's governess takes upon her to correct 
her, when she has mistaken the piano for a harp- 
sichord. 

Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable 
instance of the disadvantages to which this chimerical 
notion of affinity constitiiting a claim to acquaintance, 
may subject the spirit of a gentleman. A little 
foolish blood is all that is betwixt him and a lady 
with a great estate. His stars are perpetually crossed 
by the malignant maternity of an old woman, who 
persists in calling him '' her son Dick." But she has 
wherewithal in the end to recompense his indignities, 
and float him again upon the brilliant surface, under 
which it had been her seeming business and pleasure 
all along to sink him. All men, besides, are not of 
Dick's temperament. I knew an Amlet in real life, 
who, wanting Dick's buoyancy, sank indeed. Poor 

W was of my own standing at Christ's — a fine 

classic, and a youth of promise. If he had a blemish, 
it was too much pride ; but its quality was inoffen- 



Poor Relations, 



163 



sive ; it was not of that sort which hardens the 

heart, and serves to keep inferiors at a distance ; it 

only sought to ward off derogation from itself. It 

was the principle of 

self-respect carried as 

far as it could go, 

without infringing on 

that respect which 

he would have every 

one else equally 

maintain for himself. 

He would have you j(- 

to think alike with T 

him on this topic. 

Many a quarrel have 

I had with him, when we were rather older boys, and 

our tallness made us more obnoxious to observation 

in the blue clothes, because I would not thread the 

alleys and blind ways of the town with him to elude 

notice, when we have been out together on a holiday 

in the streets of this sneering and prying metropolis. 

W went, sore with these notions, to Oxford, 

M 2 




r to obserz'atioji in the bine clothes.^ 



164 Poor Relations, 



where the dignity and sweetness of a scholar's life^ 
meeting with the alloy of a humble introduction^ 
wrought in him a passionate devotion to the place^ 
with a profound aversion from the society. The 
servitor's gown (worse than his school array) clung 
to him with Nessian venom. He thought himself 
ridiculous in a garb under which Latimer must have 
walked erect, and in which Hooker, in his young 
days, possibly flaunted in a vein of no discommend- 
able vanity. In the depth of college shades, or in 
his lonely chamber, the poor student shrunk from 
observation. He found shelter among books, which 
insult not, and studies, that ask no questions of a 
youth's finances. He was lord of his library, and 
seldom cared for looking out beyond his domains. 
The healing influence of studious pursuits was upon 
him to soothe and to abstract. He was almost a 
healthy man, when the waywardness of his fate 
broke out against him with a second and worse 

malignity. The father of \V had hitherto 

exercised the humble profession of house-painter, 
at N , near Oxford. A supposed interest with 



Poor Relations. i6^ 



some of the heads of colleges had now induced him 
to take up his abode in that city, with the hope of 
being employed upon some public works which were 
talked of. From that moment I read in the coun- 
tenance of the young man the determination which 
at length tore him from academical pursuits for 
ever. To a person unacquainted with our univer- 
sities, the distance between the gownsmen and the 
townsmen, as they are called — the trading part of 
the latter especially — is carried to an excess that 
would appear harsh and incredible. The tempera- 
ment of W 's father was diametrically the reverse 

of his own. Old W was a little, busy, cringing 

tradesman, who, with his son upon his arm, would 
stand bowing and scraping, cap in hand, to anything 
that wore the semblance of a gown — insensible to 
the winks and opener remonstrances of the young 
man, to whose chamber-fellow, or equal in standing, 
perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and gratuitously 
ducking. Such a state of things could not last. 
W must change the air of Oxford, or be suffo- 
cated. He chose the former ; and let the sturdy 



1 66 



Poo7' Relations. 



moralist, who strains the point of the filial duties as 
high as they can bear, censure the dereliction ; he 
cannot estimate the struggle. I stood with W , 




' Boiuiftg and scrap'uig, cap in hand.'" 



the last afternoon I ever saw him, under the eaves 

of his paternal dwelling. It was in the fine lane 

leading from the High Street to the back of 

College, where W kept his rooms. 



* * * ^ 



Poor Relations. 167 



He seemed thoughtful and more reconciled. I 
ventured to rally him — finding him in a better 
mood — upon a representation of the i\rtist Evangelist, 
which the old man, whose affairs were beginning 
to flourish, had caused to be set up in a splendid 
sort of frame over his really handsome shop, either 
as a token of prosperity, or badge of gratitude to 

his saint. W looked up at the Luke, and, like 

Satan, " knew his mounted sign, and fled." A letter 
on his father's table the next morning announced 
that he had accepted a commission in a regiment 
about to embark for Portugal. He was among the 
first who perished before the walls of St. Sebastian. 
I do not know how, upon a subject which I began 
with treating half seriously, I should have fallen 
upon a recital so eminently painful ; but this theme 
of poor relationship is replete with so much matter 
for tragic as well as comic associations, that it is 
difficult to keep the account distinct without blending. 
The earliest impressions which I received on this 
matter are certainly not attended with anything 
painful, or very humiliating, in the recalling. At 



1 68 Poor Relations, 



my father's table (no very splendid one) was to be 
found, every Saturday, the mysterious figure of an 
aged gentleman, clothed in neat black, of a sad yet 
comely appearance. His deportment was of the 
essence of gravity, his words few or none ; and I 
was not to make a noise in his presence. I had 
little inclination to have done so, for my cue was 
to admire in silence. A particular elbow chair was 
appropriated to him, which was in no case to be 
violated. A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which 
appeared on no other occasion, distinguished the 
days of his coming. I used to think him a pro- 
digiously rich man. All I could make out of him 
was, that he and my father had been schoolfellows, 
a world ago, at Lincoln, and that he came from the 
Mint. The Mint I knew to be a place where all 
the money was coined, and I thought he was the 
owner of all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower 
twined themselves about his presence. He seemed 
above human infirmities and passions. A sort of 
melancholy grandeur invested him. From some 
inexplicable doom I fancied him obliged to go about 



Poor Relations. 



169 



in an eternal suit of mourning ; a captive — a stately 
being let out of the Tower on Saturdays. Often 
have I wondered 
at the temerity 
of my father, 
who, in spite of 
an habitual gene- 
ral respect which 
we all in com- 
mon . manifested 
towards him, 
would venture 
now and then 
to stand up against him in some argument touching 
their youthful days. The houses of the ancient 
city of Lincoln are divided (as most of my readers 
know) between the dwellers on the hill and in 
the valley. This marked distinction formed an 
obvious division between the boys who lived above 
(however brought together in a common school) and 
the boys whose paternal residence was on the plain ; 
a sufficient cause of hostility in the code of these 




' Would venture to stand u} against him in argument." 



I/O Poor Relations. 



young Grotluses. My father had been a leading 
Mountaineer ; and would still maintain the general 
superiority in skill and hardihood of the Above Boys 
(his own faction) over the Below Boys (so were they 
called), of which party his contemporary had been a 
chieftain. Many and hot were the skirmishes on 
this topic — the only one upon which the old gentle- 
man was ever brous^ht out — and bad blood bred : 
even sometimes almost to the recommencement (so 
I expected) of actual hostilities. But my father, 
who scorned to insist upon advantages, generally 
contrived to turn the conversation upon some adroit 
by-commendation of the old ]\Iinster ; in the general 
preference of which, before all other cathedrals in 
the island, the dweller on the hill, and the plain- 
born, could meet on a conciliating level, and lay 
down their less important differences. Once only I 
saw the old gentleman really ruffled, and I remember 
with anguish the thought that came over me : 
" Perhaps he will never come here again." He had 
been pressed to take another plate of the viand 
which I have already mentioned as the indispensable 



Poor Relations. 



171 



concomitant of his visits. He had refused with a 
resistance amounting to rigour, when my aunt, an 
old Lincolnian, but who had something of this, in 
common with my cousin Bridget, that she would 
sometimes press civility out of season, uttered the 
following memorable application : "Do take another 
slice. Mr. Billet, for you do not get pudding every 
day." The old gentleman said nothing at the time, 
but he took occasion, in the course of the evening, 
when some argu- 
ment had inter- 
vened between 
them, to utter 
with an emphasis 
which chilled the 
company, and 
which chills me 
now as I write it 
— '* Woman, you 
are superannuated ! " John Billet did not survive 
long after the digesting of this affront ; but he 
sur\'ived long enough to assure me that peace was 




* You do not get pudding every day.' ' 



172 Poor Relations, 



actually restored ! and If I remember aright, another 
pudding was discreetly substituted In the place of 
that which had occasioned the offence. He died at 
the Mint (anno 1781), where he had long held, what 
he accounted, a comfortable Independence ; and with 
five pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny, which 
were found In his escrltoir after his decease, left the 
world, blessing God that he had enough to bury 
him, and that he had never been obliged to any 
man for a sixpence. This was — a Poor Relation. 



o.u^^(i:t^5 




Det^clied Thoughts 

on Books ^.ndPxe^ing 



To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with 
the forced product of another man's brain. Now I think a 
man of quality and breeding may be much amused with the 
natural sprouts of his own. — Lord Foppingtonjn 'TJie Relapsed 

An ingenious acquaintance of my own was so 
much struck with this bright sally of his Lordship, 
that he has left off reading altogether, to the great 
improvement of his originality. At the hazard of 
loslno: some credit on this head, I must confess 
that I dedicate no Inconsiderable portion of my 
time to other people's thoughts. I dream away 



1 74 Detached Thozights on Books and Reading, 



my life in others' speculations. I love to lose 
myself in other men's minds. When I am not 
Avalking, I am reading ; I cannot sit and think. 
Books think for me. 

I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too 
genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can 
read anything which I call a book. There are things 
in that shape which I cannot allow for such. 

In this catalogue of books which are no books — 
biblia a-biblia — I reckon Court Calendars, Direc- 
tories, Pocket Books [the Literary excepted], 
Draught Boards, bound and lettered on the back, 
Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at Large : 
the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, 
Soame Jenyns, and generally, all these volumes 
which " no gentleman's library should be without : " 
the Histories of Flavius Josephus (that learned 
Jew), and Paley's }^Ioral Philosophy. With these 
exceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless 
my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding. 

I confess that it moves my spleen to see these 
things in books clothing perched upon shelves, like 



Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading, 175 



false saints, usurpers of true shrines, intruders into 
the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate occu- 
pants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of 
a volume, and hope it some kind-hearted play-book, 
then, opening what '^ seem its leaves," to come bolt 
upon a withering Population Essay. To expect a 
Steele or a Farquhar, and find — Adam Smith. 
To view a well-arranged assortment of blockheaded 
Encyclopaedias (Anglicanas or Metropolitanas) set 
out in an array of russia, or morocco, when a tithe 
of that good leather would comfortably re-clothe 
my shivering folios, would renovate Paracelsus 
himself, and enable old Raymund Lully to look 
like himself again in the world. I never see these 
impostors, but I long to strip them, to warm my 
ragged veterans in their spoils. 

To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the 
desideratum of a volume. Magnificence comes 
after. This, when it can be afforded, is not to be 
lavished upon all kinds of books indiscriminately. 
I would not dress a set of magazines, for instance, 
in full suit. The dishabille, or half-binding (with 



176 Detached Thoughts, on Books and Reading. 

russia backs ever) is onr costume. A Shakspeare 
or a Milton (unless the first editions), it were mere 
foppery to trick out in gay apparel. The posses- 
sion of them confers no distinction. The exterior 
of them (the things themselves being so common), 
strange to say, raises no sweet emotions, no 
tickling sense of property in the owner. Thomson's 
Seasons, again, looks best (I maintain it) a little 
torn and dog's-eared. How beautiful to a genuine 
lover of reading are the sullied leaves, and worn- 
out appearance, nay, the very odour (beyond russia), 
if we would not forget kind feelings in fastidious- 
ness, of an old " Circulating Library " Tom Jones, 
or Vicar of Wakefield ! How they speak of the 
thousand thumbs that have turned over their pages 
with delight!— of the lone sempstress, whom they 
may have cheered (milliner, or harder-working 
mantua-maker) after her long day's needle-toil, 
running far into midnight, when she has snatched 
an hour, ill-spared from sleep, to steep her cares, 
as In some Lethean cup, in spelling out their 
enchantlnor contents ! Who would have them a 



Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading. 177 

whit less soiled ? What better condition could we 

desire to see them in ? 

In some respects the better a book is, the less it 

demands from binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, 

and all that class of perpetually self-reproductive 

volumes — Great Nature's Stereotypes — we see them 

individually perish with less regret, because we 

know the copies of them to be " eterne." But 

where a book is at once both good and rare — 

where the Individual Is almost the species, and 

when that perishes, 

We know not where is that Promethean torch 
That can its light relumine, — 

such a book, for Instance, as the Life of the Duke 
of Newcastle, by his Duchess — no casket Is rich 
enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honour 
and keep safe such a jewel. 

Not only rare volumes of this description, which 
seem hopeless ever to be reprinted, but old 
editions of writers, such as Sir Philip Sydney, 
Bishop Taylor, Milton in his prose works, Fuller — 
of whom we have reprints, yet the books them- 

N 



178 Detached TJiottghts on Books and Reading. 

selves, though they go about, and are talked of 
here and there, we know have not endenizened 
themselves (nor possibly ever will) in the national 
heart, so as to become stock books — it is good to 
possess these in durable and costly covers. I do 
not care for a First Folio of Shakspeare. [You 
cannot make a pet book of an author whom every- 
body reads.] I rather prefer the common editions 
of Rowe and Tonson, without notes, and with 
plates, which, being so execrably bad, serve as 
maps or modest remembrancers, to the text ; and, 
without pretending to any supposable emulation 
with it, are so much better than the Shakspeare 
gallery engravings^ which did. I have a community 
of feeling with my countrymen about his Plays, and 
I like those editions of him best which have been 
oftenest tumbled about and handled. — On the 
contrary, I cannot read Beaumont and Fletcher but 
in Folio. The Octavo editions are painful to look 
at. I have no sympathy with them. If they were 
as much read as the current editions of the other 
poet, I should prefer them in that shape to the 



Detached TJioughts on Books and Reading. 1 79 

older one. I do not know a more heartless sight 
than the reprint of the Anatomy of Melancholy. 
What need was there of unearthing the bones of 
that fantastic old great man, to expose them in a 
winding-sheet of the newest fashion to modern 
censure ? what hapless stationer could dream of 
Burton ever becoming popular ? — The wretched 
Malone could not do worse, when he bribed the 
sexton of Stratford church to let him whitewash 
the painted effigy of old Shakspeare, which stood 
there, in rude but lively fashion depicted, to the 
very colour of the cheek, the eye, the eyebrow, 
hair, the very dress he used to wear — the only 
authentic testimony we had, however imperfect, 
of these curious parts and parcels of him. They 
covered him over with a coat of white paint. 

By , if I had been a justice of peace for 

Warwickshire, I would have clapt both commen- 
tator and sexton fast in the stocks, for a pair of 
meddling sacrilegious varlets. 

I think I see them at their work — these sapient 
trouble tombs. 

N 2 



1 8c Detached Tho2Lo;hts on Books and Reading. 



Shall I be thought fantastical if I confess that 
the names of some of our poets sound sweeter, and 
have a finer relish to the ear — to mine, at least — 
than that of Milton or of Shakspeare ? It may be 
that the latter are more staled and rung upon in 
common discourse. The sweetest names, and 
which carry a perfume in the mention, are. Kit 
Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and 
Cowley. 

Much depends upon zvhen and whei^e you read a 
book. In the five or six impatient minutes, before 
the dinner is quite ready, who would think of 
taking up the Fairy Queen for a stop-gap, or a 
volume of Bishop Andrewes' sermons ? 

Milton almost requires a solemn service of music 
to be played before you enter upon him. But he 
brings his music, to which, who listens, had need 
bring docile thoughts, and purged ears. 

Winter evenings — the world shut out — with less 
of ceremony the gentle Shakspeare enters. At 
such a season the Tempest, or his own Winter's 
Tale— 



Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading. 1 8 1 



These two poets you cannot avoid reading 
aloud — to yourself, or (as it chances) to some single 
person listening. More than one — and it degenerates 
into an audience. 

Books of quick interest, that hurry on for inci- 
dents, are for the eye to glide over only. It will 
not do to read them out. I could never listen 
to even the better kind of modern novels without 
extremie irksomeness. 

A newspaper, read out, is intolerable. In some 
of the Bank offices it is the custom (to save so 
much individual time) for one of the clerks — who is 
the best scholar — to commence upon the Times or 
the Chronicle and recite its entire contents aloud, 
pro bono publico. With every advantage of lungs 
and elocution, the effect is singularly vapid. In 
barbers' shops and public-houses a fellow will get 
up and spell out a paragraph, which he communi- 
cates as some discovery. Another follows with his 
selection. So the entire journal transpires at length 
by piecemeal. Seldom-readers are slow readers, and 
without this expedient, no one in the company 



1 82 Detached Thoitghts on Books and Reading. 



would probably ever travel through the contents of 
a whole paper. 

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one 
ever lays one down without a feeling of disappoint- 
ment. 

What an eternal time that gentleman in black, 
at Nando's, keeps the paper ! I am sick of hearing 
the waiter bawling out incessantly, " The Chronicle 
is in hand. Sir." 

[As in these little diurnals I generally skip the 
Foreign News, the Debates and the Politics, I find 
the Morning Herald by far the most entertaining 
of them. It is an agreeable miscellany rather than 
a newspaper.] 

Coming into an inn at night — having ordered 
your supper — what can be more delightful than to 
find lying in the window-seat, left there time out of 
mind by the carelessness of some former guest — two 
or three numbers of the old Town and Country 
Magazine, with its amusing tete-a-tete pictures — 

"The Royal Lover and Lady G ; " "The 

jNIeltlng Platonic and the old Beau," — and such-like 



Detached Thoicghts on Books and Reading. 183 

antiquated scandal ? Would you exchange it — at 
that time, and in that place — for a better book ? 

Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not 
regret it so much for the weightier kinds of reading 
— the Paradise Lost, or Comus, he could have read 
to him — but he missed the pleasure of skimming 
over with his own eye a magazine, or a light 
pamphlet. 

I should not care to be caught in the serious 
avenues of some cathedral alone, and reading 
Candide. 

I do not remember a more whimsical surprise 
than having been once detected — by a familiar 
damsel — reclined at my ease upon the grass, on 
Primrose Hill (her Cythera) reading — Pamela, 
There was nothing in the book to make a man 
seriously ashamed at the exposure ; but as she 
seated herself down by me, and seemed determined 
to read in company, I could have wished it had 
been — any other book. We read on very sociably 
for a few pages ; and, not finding the author 
much to her taste, she got up, and — went away. 



184 Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading, 



Gentle casuist, I leave it to thee to conjecture, 
whether the blush (for there was one between us) 
was the property of the nymph or the swain in this 
dilemma. From me you shall never get the secret. 

I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. 
I cannot settle my spirits to it. I knew a Uni- 
tarian minister, who was generally to be seen upon 
Snow Hill (as yet Skinner's Street ivas not), 
between the hours of ten and eleven in the 
morning, studying a volume of Lardner. I own 
this to have been a strain of abstraction beyond 
my reach. I used to admire how he sidled along, 
keeping clear of secular contacts. An illiterate 
encounter with a porter's knot, or a bread basket, 
would have quickly put to flight all the theology 
I am master of, and have left me worse than 
indifferent to the five points. 

[I was once amused — there is a pleasure in 
affecting affectation — at the indignation of a crowd 
that was jostling In with me at the pit-door of 
Covent Garden Theatre, to have a sight of Master 
Betty — then at once in his dawn and his meridian 



Detached TJioiioJits on Books and Readimr. iSs 



— in Hamlet, I had been invited, quite unex- 
pectedly, to join a party, whom I met near the 
door of the playhouse, and I happened to have in 
my hand a large octavo of Johnson and Steevens's 
S/iakspeaj'c, which, the time not admitting of my 
carrying it horrie. of course went with me to the 
theatre. Just in the very heat and pressure of the 
doors opening — the 7-21 s/i, as they term it — I 
deliberately held the volume over my head, open 
at the scene in which the young Roscius had been 
most cried up, and quietly read by the lamp-light. 
The clamour became universal. " The affectation 
of the fellow.'' cried one. '' Look at that gentle- 
man reading, papa," squeaked a young lady, who, 
in her admiration of the novelty, almost forgot her 
fears. I read on. " He ought to have his book 
knocked out of his hand,'' exclaimed a pursy cit, 
whose arms were too fast pinioned to his side to 
suffer him to execute his kind intention. Still I 
read on — and. till the time came to pay my money, 
kept as unmoved as Saint Anthony at his holy 
offices, with the satyrs, apes, and hobgoblins, 



1 86 Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading. 

mopping, and making mouths at him, in the 
picture, while the good man sits as undisturbed at 
the sight as if he were the sole tenant of the 
desert. — The individual rabble (I recognised more 
than one of their ugly faces) had damned a sHght 
piece of mine a few nights before, and I was 
determined the culprits should not a second time 
put me out of countenance.] 

There is a class of street readers, whom I can 
never contemplate without affection — the poor 
gentry, who, not having wherewithal to buy or hire 
a book, filch a little learning at the open stalls — 
the owner, with his hard eye, casting envious looks 
at them all the while, and thinking when they will 
have done. Venturing tenderly, page after page, 
expecting every moment when he shall interpose his 
interdict, and yet unable to deny themselves the 
gratification, they " snatch a fearful joy." Martin 

B , in this way, by daily fragments, got through 

two volumes of Clarissa, when the stall-keeper 
damped his laudable ambition, by asking him (it 
was in his younger days) whether he meant to 



Detached Thoiights on Books and ReadiJig. 187 



purchase the work. M. declares, that under no 
circumstance In his Hfe did he ever peruse a book 
with half the satisfaction which he took In those 
uneasy snatches. A quaint poetess of our day has 
moralised upon this subject In two very touching 
but homely stanzas : 

I saw a boy with eager eye 

Open a book upon a stall, 

And read, as he'd devour it all ; 

Which, when the stall-man did espy, 

Soon to the boy I heard him call, 

" You, Sir, you never buy a book, 

Therefore in one you shall not look.' 

The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a sigh 

He wish'd he never had been taught to read, [need. 

Then of the old churl's books he should have had no 

Of sufferings the poor have many, 

Which never can the rich annoy. 

I soon perceived another boy, 

Who look'd as if he had not any 

Food, for that day at least — enjoy 

The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder. 

This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder, 

Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny. 

Beholding choice of dainty-dressed meat : 

No wonder if he wish he ne'er had learn'd to eat. 




' Dri}ik to your siveethearts, girls.'''' 



Among the deaths in our obituary for this month 
I observe with concern " At his cottage on the 
Bath Road, Captain Jackson." The name and 
attribution are common enough ; but a feehng Hke 
reproach persuades me that this could have been 
no other in fact than my dear old friend, who some 
five-and-twenty years ago rented a tenement, which 



Captain Jackson. 



189 



he was pleased to dignify with the appellation here 
used, about a mile from Westbourn Green. Alack, 
how good men, and the good turns they do us, slide 
out of memory, and are recalled but by the surprise 
of some such sad memento as that which now lies 
before us ! 

He whom I mean was a retired half-pay officer, 
wi:h a wife and two grown-up daughters, whom he 
maintained with the port and notions of gentle- 
women upon that slender professional allowance. 
Comely girls they were too. 

And was I in danger of for- 
getting this man ? — his cheer- 
ful suppers — the noble tone 

of hospitality, when first you 
iiiiyitii^HKiff/M >ui[iii tiBSBn\ 

. 11 llin Hfe H JJUBBk ^ set your foot in t/ie cottage — 
v\ m\ ALJ^^m, wmj/i \ the anxious mmister- 

ings about you, where 
little or nothing (God 
knows) v/as to be min- 
istered. — Althea's horn in a poor platter — the power 
of self-enchantment, by which, in his magnificent 




" Althea's horn in a poor J>laiie>:' 



190 Captain yackson. 



wishes to entertain you, he multipHed his means 
to bounties. 

You saw with your bodily eyes indeed what 
seemed a bare scrag — cold savings from the fore- 
gone meal — remnant hardly sufficient to send a 
mendicant from the door contented. But in the 
copious will — the revelling imagination of your host 
— the " mind, the mind, Master Shallow," whole 
beeves were spread before you — hecatombs — no 
end appeared to the profusion. 

It was the widow's cruse — the loaves and fishes ; 
carving could not lessen, nor helping diminish It — 
the stamina were left — the elemental bone still 
flourished, divested of its accidents. 

" Let us live while we can," methinks I hear the 
open-handed creature exclaim; *' while we have, let 
us not want," "here Is plenty left;" *' want for 
nothing " — with many more such hospitable sayings, 
the spurs of appetite, and old concomitants of 
smoking boards and feast-oppressed chargers. Then 
sliding a slender ratio of Single Gloucester upon 
his v/ife's plate, or the daughters', he would convey 



Captain yackson. 



191 



the remanent rind Into his own, with a merry quirk 
of ''the nearer the bone," &c., and declaring that 
he universally preferred the outside. For we had 
our table distinctions, you are to know, and some 




" 'Let Its live ivhile ive can.'' 



of us in a manner sate above the salt. None but 
his guest or guests dreamed of tasting flesh luxuries 
at night, the fragments were vere hospitibns sacra. 
But of one thing or another there was always 
enough, and leavings ; only he would sometimes 



192 Captain Jack son. 



finish the remainder crust, to show that he wished 
no savings. 

Wine we had none ; nor, except on very rare 
occasions, spirits ; but the sensation of wine was 
there. Some thin kind of ale I remember — 
"British beverage," he would say! *' Push about, 
my boys ; " " Drink to your sweethearts, girls." At 
every meagre draught a toast must ensue, or a 
song. All the forms of good liquor were there, 
with none of the effects wanting. Shut your eyes, 
and you would swear a capacious bowl of punch 
was foaming in the centre, with beams of generous 
Port or Madeira radiating to it from each of the 
table corners. You got flustered, without knowing 
whence ; tipsy upon words ; and reeled under the 
potency of his unperforming Bacchanalian en- 
couragements. 

We had our songs — *'Why, Soldiers, why," — and 
the '' British Grenadiers " — in which last we were 
all obliged to bear chorus. Both the daughters 
sang. Their proficiency was a nightly theme — the 
masters he had given them — the "no-expense" 



Captain yackson. 



193 



which he spared to accompUsh them in a science 
'' so necessary to young women." But then — they 
could not sing "without the instrument." 

Sacred, and, by me, never-to-be-violated, secrets 
of Poverty ! Should I disclose your honest aims at 
grandeur, your makeshift efforts of magnificence ? 
Sleep, sleep, with all thy broken keys, if one of the 







"Dear, cracked spin/iet.' 



194 Captain yackson. 

bunch be extant ; thrummed by a thousand ancestral 
thumbs ; dear, cracked splnnet of dearer Louisa ! 
Without mention of mine, be dumb, thou thin 
accompanier of her thinner warble ! A veil be 
spread over the dear delighted face of the well- 
deluded father, who now haply listening to cherubic 
notes, scarce feels sincerer pleasure than when 
she awakened thy time-shaken chords responsive 
to the twitterings of that slender image of a 
voice. 

We were not without our literary talk either. It 
did not extend far, but as far as it went it was 
good. It was bottomed well ; had good grounds to 
go upon. In the cottage was a room, which tra- 
dition authenticated to have been the same in which 
Glover, in his occasional retirements, had penned 
the greater part of his Leonidas. This circumstance 
was nightly quoted, though none of the present 
inmates, that I could discover, appeared ever to 
have met with the poem in question. But that was 
no m.atter. Glover had written there, and the 
anecdote was pressed into the account of the family 



Captain yackson. 



195 



importance. It diffused a learned air through the 
apartment, the httle side casement of which (the 
poet's study window), opening upon a superb view 
as far as the pretty spire of Harrow, over domains 




".-/ superb ziciu as far as the spire of Harrow." 



and patrimonial acres, not a rood nor square yard 
whereof our host could call his own, yet gave 

2 



196 



Captain yackson. 



occasion to an immoderate expansion of — vanity 
shall I call it ? — in his bosom, as he showed them 
in a glowing summer evening. It was all his, he 
took it all in, and communicated 
rich portions of it to his guests. 
It was a part of his largess, 
his hospitality ; it was going 
over his grounds ; he was lord 
for the time of showing them, 
and you the implicit lookers-up 
to his magnificence. 

He was a juggler, who threw 
mists before your eyes — you 
had no time to detect his fal- 
lacies. He would say, " Hand 
me the silver sugar-tongs ; " and 
before you could discover it was a single spoon, and 
that plated, he would disturb and captivate your 
imagination by a misnomer of " the urn " for a tea- 
kettle ; or by calling a homely bench a sofa. Rich 
men direct you to their furniture, poor ones divert 
you from it ; he neither did one nor the other, but 




'He ivas a juggle}-, crc." 



Captain Jackson. 197 



by simply assuming that everything was handsome 
about him, you were positively at a demur what you 
did, or did not see, at the cottage. With nothing to 
live on, he seemed to live on everything. He had 
a stock of wealth in his mind ; not that which is 
properly termed Content, for in truth he was not to 
be contained at all, but overflowed all bounds by the 
force, of a magnificent self-delusion. 

Enthusiasm is catching ; and even his wife, a sober 
native of North Britain, who generally saw things 
more as they were, was not proof against the 
continual collision of his credulity. Her daughters 
were rational and discreet young women ; in the 
main, perhaps, not insensible to their true circum- 
stances. I have seen them assume a thoughtful air 
at times. But such was the preponderating opulence 
of his fancy, that I am persuaded not for any half 
hour together did they ever look their own pros- 
pects fairly in the face. There was no resisting 
the vortex of his temperament. His riotous imagi- 
nation conjured up handsome settlements before 
their eyes, which kept them up In the eye of the 



Captain Jackson. 



world too, and seem at last to have realized 
themselves ; for they both have married since, I am 
told, more than respectably. 

It is long since, and my memory waxes dim on 
some subjects, or I should wish to convey some 
notion of the manner in which the pleasant creature 
described the circumstances of his own wedding-day. 







^' A chaise-aiid-four, in which he made his cntTy inty G'asgo^v." 



I faintly remember something of a chaise-and-four, 
in which he made his entry into Glasgow on that 



Captain yackson. 199 



morning to fetch the bride home, or carry her 
thither, I forget which. It so completely made out 
the stanza of the old ballad — 

When we came down through Glasgow town, 

We were a comely sight to see ; 
My love was clad in black velvet, 

And I myself in cramasie. 

I suppose it was the only occasion upon which 
his own actual splendour at all corresponded with 
the world's notions on that subject. In homely 
cart, or travelling caravan, by whatever humble 
vehicle they chanced to be transported in less 
prosperous days, the ride through Glasgow came 
back upon his fancy, not as a humiliating contrast, 
but as a fair occasion for reverting to that one 
day's state. It seemed an ''equipage etern " from 
which no power of fate or fortune, once mounted, 
had power thereafter to dislodge him. 

There is some merit in putting a handsome face 
upon indigent circumstances. To bully and swagger 
away the sense of them before strangers, may not 
be always discommendable. Tibbs, and Bobadil, 



20Q 



Captain Jackson. 



even when detected, have more of our admiration 
than contempt. But for a man to put the cheat 
upon himself; to play the Bobadil at home; and 
steeped in poverty up to the lips, to fancy himself 
all the while chin-deep in riches, is a strain of 
constitutional philosophy, and a mastery over fortune, 
which was reserved for my old friend Captain 
Jackson. 




M 





^.'■^/I 




^li^iM 


HHii 


Hi 




1 rn p etJ^iecioy m pTsM'i e s 



I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and 
sympathiseth with all things ; I have no antipathy, or rather 
idiosyncrasy in anything. Those natural repugnancies do not 
touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, 
Spaniard, or Dutch. — Religio Medici. 



That the author of the Religio Medici mounted 
upon the airy stilts of abstraction, conversant about 
notional and conjectural essences ; in whose cate- 
gories of Being the possible took the upper hand 
of the actual ; should have overlooked the imper- 



202 Imperfect Sympathies. 

tinent individualities of such poor concretions as 
mankind, is not much to be admired. It is rather 
to be wondered at, that in the genus of animals 
he should have condescended to distinguish that 
species at all. For myself — earth-bound and fettered 
to the scene of my activities, — 

Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky, 

I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind, 
national or individual, to an unhealthy excess. I 
can look with no indifferent eye upon things or 
persons. Whatever is, is to me a matter of taste 
or distaste ; or vvhen once it becomes indifferent it 
begins to be disrelishing. I am, in plainer words, 
a bundle of prejudices — made up of likings and 
dislikings — the veriest thrall to sympathies, apathies, 
antipathies. In a certain sense, I hope it may be 
said of me that I am a lover of my species. I 
can feel for all indifferently, but I cannot feel 
towards all equally. The more purely-English 
word that expresses sym.pathy, will better explain 
my meaning. I can be a friend to a worthy man, 



Imperfect Sympathies. 



who upon another account cannot be my mate or 
felloiv. ~ I cannot like all people alike.* 

I have been trying all my life to like Scotch- 
men, and am obliged to desist from the experiment 

* I would be understood as confining myself to the subject 
of imperfect sympathies. To nations or classes of men there 
can be no direct antipathy. There may be individuals born 
and constellated so opposite to another individual nature, that 
the same sphere cannot hold them. I have met with my 
moral antipodes, and can believe the story of two persons 
meeting (who never saw one another before in their lives) and 
instantly fighting. 

— ^^ We by proof find there should be 
'Twixt man and man such an antipathy, 
That though he can show no just reason ^^'hy 
For any former wrong or injury. 
Can neither find a blemish in his fame, 
Nor aught in face or feature justly blame. 
Can challenge or accuse him of no evil, 
Yet notwithstanding hates him as a devil. 

The lines are from old Heywood's " Hierarchic of Angels," 
and he subjoins a curious story in confirmation, of a Spaniard 
who attempted to assassinate a king Ferdinand of Spain, and 
being put to the rack could give no other reason for the deed 
but an inveterate antipathy which he had taken to the first 
sight of the king. 

The cause which to that act compell'd him 

Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him. 



204 Imperfect Sympathies. 



in despair. They cannot like me — and in truth, I 
never knew one of that nation who attempted to 
do it. There is something more plain and in- 
genuous in their mode of proceeding. We know 
one another at first sight. There is an order of 
imperfect intellects (under which mine must be 
content to rank) which in its constitution is 
essentially anti-Caledonian. The owners of the 
sort of faculties I allude to, have minds rather 
suggestive than comprehensive. They have no 
pretences to much clearness or precision in their 
ideas, or in their manner of expressing them. 
Their intellectual wardrobe (to confess fairly) has 
few whole pieces in it. They are content with 
fragments and scattered pieces of Truth. She 
presents no full front to them — a feature or side- 
face at the most. Hints and glimpses, germs and 
crude essays at a system, is the utmost they 
pretend to. They beat up a little game per- 
adventure — and leave it to knottier heads, more 
robust constitutions, to run it down. The light 
that lights them is not steady and polar, but 



Impei^fect Sympathies. 205 

mutable and shifting : waxing, and again waning. 
Their conversation is accordingly. They will throw 
out a random word in or out of season, and be 
content to let it pass for what it is worth. They 
cannot speak always as if they were upon their 
oath — but must be understood, speaking or writing, 
with some abatement. They seldom wait to 
mature a proposition, but e'en bring it to market 
in the green ear. They delight to impart their 
defective discoveries as they arise, without waiting 
for their development. They are no systematizers, 
and would but err more by attempting it. Their 
minds, as I said before, are suggestive merely. 
The brain of a true Caledonian (if I am not mis- 
taken) is constituted upon quite a different plan. 
His Minerva is born in panoply. You are never 
admitted to see his ideas in their growth — if, 
indeed, they do grow, and are not rather put 
together upon principles of clock-work. You never 
catch his mind in an undress. He never hints or 
suggests anything, but unlades his stock of ideas in 
perfect order and completeness. He brings his 



2o6 Imperfect Sympathies. 

total wealth into company, and gravely unpacks it. 
His riches are always about him. He never stoops 
to catch a glittering something in your presence to 
share it with you, before he quite knows whether 
it be true touch or not. You cannot cry halves 
to anything that he finds. He does not find, but 
bring. You never witness his first apprehension of 
a thing. His understanding is always at its 
meridian — you never see the first dawn, the early 
streaks. — He has no falterings of self-suspicion. 
Surmises, guesses, misgivings, half-intuitions, semi- 
consciousnesses, partial illuminations, dim instincts, 
embryo conceptions, have no place in his brain or 
vocabulary. The twilight of dubiety never falls 
upon him. Is he orthodox — he has no doubts. Is 
he an infidel — he has none either. Between the 
affirmative and the negative there is no border-land 
with him. You cannot hover with him upon the 
confines of truth, or wander in the maze of a 
probable argument. He always keeps the path. 
You cannot make excursions with him — for he 
sets you right. His taste never fluctuates. His 



Imperfect Sympathies. 207 

morality never abates. He cannot compromise, or 
understand middle actions. There can be but a 
right and a wrong. His conversation is as a book. 
His affirmations have the sanctity of an oath. You 
must speak upon the square with him. He stopc 
a metaphor like a suspected person in an enemy's 
country. " A healthy book ! " — said one of his 
countrymen to me, who had ventured to give that 
appellation to John Buncle, — " Did I catch rightly 
what you said ? I have heard of a man in health, 
and of a healthy state of body, but I do not see 
how the epithet can be properly applied to a 
book." Above all, you must beware of indirect 
expressions before a Caledonian. Clap an extin- 
guisher upon your irony, if you are unhappily blest 
with a vein of it. Remember you are upon your 
oath. I have a print of a graceful figure after 
Leonardo da Vinci, which I was showing off to 
Mr. * * * '^ After he had examined it minutely, 
I ventured to ask him how he liked my beauty (a 
foolish name it goes by among my friends) — when 
he very gravely assured me, that "he had con- 



2o8 Imperfect Sympathies. 



siderable respect for my character and talents " (so 
he was pleased to say), '' but had not given 
himself much thought about the degree of my 
personal pretensions." The misconception staggered 
me, but did not seem much to disconcert him. — 
Persons of this nation are particularly fond of 
affirming a truth — which nobody doubts. They do 
not so properly affirm, as annunciate it. They do 
indeed appear to have such a love of truth (as if, 
like virtue, it were valuable for itself) that all 
truth becomes equally valuable whether the pro- 
position that contains it be new or old, disputed, 
or such as is impossible to become a subject of 
disputation. I was present not long since at a 
party of North Britons, where a son of Burns was 
expected ; and happened to drop a silly expression 
(In my South British way), that I wished it were 
the father instead of the son— when four of them 
started up at once to inform me, that ''that was 
impossible, because he was dead." An imprac- 
ticable wish, it seems, was more than they could 
conceive. Swift has hit off this part of their 



Imperfect Sympathies. 209 

character, namely their love of truth, in his biting 
way, but with an illiberality that necessarily 
confines the passage to the margin.* The tedious- 
ness of these people is certainly provoking. I 
wonder if they ever tire one another! — In my early 
life I had a passionate fondness for the poetry of 
Burns. I have sometimes foolishly hoped to 
ingratiate myself vath his countrymen by expressing 
it. But I have always found that a true Scot 
resents your admiration of his compatriot even 
more than he would your contempt of him. The 
latter he imputes to your *' imperfect acquaintance 
with many of the words which he uses ; " and the 
same objection makes it a presumption in you to 



* There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit 
themselves, and entertain their company, with relating facts 
of no consequence, not at all out of the road of such common 
incidents as happen every day ; and this I have observed 
more frequently among the Scots than any other nation, who 
are very careful not to omit the minutest circumstances of 
time or place ; which kind of discourse, if it were not a little 
relieved by the uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent 
and gesture, peculiar to that country, would be hardly toler- 
able. — Hints toivards an Essay on Conversation. 



2IO Imperfect Sympathies. 

suppose that you can admire him. — Thomson they 
seem to have forgotten. Smollett they have 
neither forgotten nor forgiven, for his delineation 
of Rory and his companion, upon their first 
Introduction to our metropolis. — Speak of Smollett 
as a great genius, and they will retort upon you 
Hume's History compared with his Continuation of 
It. What If the historian had continued Humphrey 
Clinker ? 

I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for the Jews. 
They are a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared 
with which Stonehenge is In Its nonage. They 
date beyond the pyramids. But I should not care 
to be In habits of familiar intercourse with any of 
that nation. I confess that I have not the nerves 
to enter their synagogues. Old prejudices cling 
obout me. I cannot shake off the story of Hugh 
af Lincoln. Centuries of Injury, contempt, and hate, 
on the one side, — of cloaked revenge, dissimulation, 
and hate, on the other, between our and their fathers, 
must and ought to affect the blood of the children. 
I cannot believe it can run clear and kindly yet ; or 



Imperfect Sympathies, 



that a few words, such as candour, liberality, the 
light of the nineteenth century, can close up the 
•breaches of so deadly a disunion. A Hebrew is 
■nowhere congenial to me. He is least distasteful 
•on 'Change — for the mercantile spirit levels all dis- 
tinctions, as all are beauties in the dark. I boldly 
confess that I do not relish the approximation of 
Jew and Christian, which has become so fashionable. 
The reciprocal endearments have, to me, something 
hypocritical and unnatural in them. I do not like 
to see the Church and Synagogue kissing and con- 
geeing in awkward postures of an affected civility. 
If they are converted, why do they not come over 
to us altogether ? Why keep up a form of separa- 
tion, when the life of it is fled? If they can sit 
with us at table, why do they keck at our cookery ? 
I do not understand these half convertites. Jews 
■christianizing — Christians judaizing — puzzle me. I 
like fish or flesh. A moderate Jew is a more con- 
founding piece of anomaly than a wet Quaker. The 
spirit of the synagogue is essentially separative. 

B would have been more in keeping if he had 

p 2 



212 Imperfect Sympathies. 

abided by the faith of his forefathers. There Is a 
■fine scorn In his face, which nature meant to be of 

• Christians. — The Hebrew spirit Is strong in him,. 

in spite of his proselytlsm. He cannot conquer the 
Shibboleth. How It breaks out, when he sings,. 
*'The Children of Israel passed through the Red 
Sea ! " The auditors, for the moment, are as 
Egyptians to him, and he rides over our necks in 

triumph. There Is no mistaking him. B has 

a strong expression of sense in his countenance, and 
it Is confirmed by his singing. The foundation of 
his vocal excellence is sense. He sings with under- 
standing, as Kemble delivered dialogue. He would 
sing the Commandments, and give an appropriate 
character to each prohibition. His nation, in general,, 
have not over-sensible countenances. How should 
they ? — but you seldom see a silly expression among 
them. — Gain, and the pursuit of gain, sharpen a 
man's visage. I never heard of an Idiot being born 
among them. — Some admire the Jewish female- 
physiognomy. I admire it — but with trembling. Jael 
had those full dark inscrutable eyes. 



Imperfect Sympathies. 2 r 3 

In the Negro countenance you will often meet 
^vith strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings 
•of tenderness towards some of these faces — or rather 
masks— that have looked out kindly upon one in 
casual encounters in the streets and highways. I 
love what Fuller beautifully calls — these "images of 
God cut in ebony." But I should not like to asso- 
ciate with them, to share my meals and my good- 
nights with them — because they are black. 

I love Quaker ways, and Quaker w^orship. I 
venerate the Quaker principles. It does me good 
for the rest of the day when I meet any of their 
people in my path. When I am ruffled or disturbed 
by any occurrence, the sight, or quiet voice of a 
Quaker, acts upon me as a ventilator, lightening 
the air, and taking off a load from the bosom. But 
I cannot like the Quakers (as Desdemona would say) 
'' to live with them." I am all over sophisticated — 
with humours, fancies, craving hourly sympathy. I 
must have books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat, 
scandal, jokes, ambiguities, and a thousand whim- 
whams, which their simpler taste can do without. 



2 14 Imperfect Sympathies. 

I should starve at their primitive banquet. My 
appetites are too high for the salads which (according. 
to Evelyn) Eve dressed for the angel ; my gusto too 
excited 

To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 

The indirect answers which Quakers are often, 
found to return to a question put to them may be 
explained, I think, without the vulgar assumption. 
that they are more given to evasion and equivoca- 
ting than other people. They naturally look to- 
their words more carefully, and are more cautious of 
committing themselves. They have a peculiar 
character to keep up on this head. They stand In. 
a manner upon their veracity. A Quaker is by law 
exempted from taking an oath. The custom of 
resorting to an oath In extreme cases, sanctified as 
it is by all religious antiquity, is apt (It must be 
confessed) to Introduce Into the laxer sort of minds 
the notion of two kinds of truth — the one applicable 
to the solemn affairs of justice, and the other to the 
common proceedings of daily intercourse. As truth 



Imperfect Sympathies. 2 1 5 

bound upon the conscience by an oath can be but 
truth, so hi the common affirmations of the shop 
and the market-place a latitude is expected, and 
conceded upon questions wanting this solemn cove- 
nant. Something less than truth satisfies. It is 
common to hear a person say, " You do not expect 
me to speak as if I were upon my oath." Hence 
a great deal of incorrectness and inadvertency, short 
of falsehood, creeps into ordinary conversation ; and 
a kind of secondary or laic-truth is tolerated, where 
clergy-truth — oath-truth, by the nature of the cir- 
cumstances, is not required. A Quaker knows 
none of this distinction. His simple affirmation 
being received upon the most sacred occasions, 
without any further test, stamps a value upon the 
words which he is to use upon the most indifferent 
topics of life. He looks to them, naturally, with 
more severity. You can have of him no more than 
his word. He knows, if he is caught tripping In a 
casual expression, he forfeits, for himself at least, 
his claim to the invidious exemption. He knows 
that his syllables are weighed — and how far a con- 



2 1 6 Imperfect Synipaihies. 

sciousness of this particular watchfulness, exerted 
against a person, has a tendency to produce indirect 
answers, and a diverting of the question by honest 
means, might be illustrated, and the practice justified 
by a more sacred example than is proper to be 
adduced upon this occasion. The admirable pre- 
sence of mind, which is notorious in Quakers upon 
all contingencies, might be traced to this imposed 
self-watchfulness — it it did not seem rather an 
humble and secular scion of that old stock of re- 
ligious constancy, which never bent or faltered, in 
the Primitive Friends, or gave w^ay to the winds of 
persecution, to the violence of judge or accuser, 
under trials and racking examinations. " You will 
never be the wiser, if I sit here answering your 
questions till midnight," said one of those upright 
Justicers to Penn, who had been putting law-cases 
with a puzzling subtlety. '' Thereafter as the answers 
may be," retorted the Quaker. The astonishing 
composure of this people is sometim.es ludicrously 
displayed in lighter instances. — I was travelling in a 
stage-coach with three male Quakers, buttoned up 



Imperfect Sympathiis. 217 



in the straightest nonconformity of their sect. We 
stopped to bait at Andover, where a meal, partly 
tea apparatus, partly supper, was set before us. My 
friends confined themselves to the tea-table. I in 
my way took supper. When the landlady brought 
in the bill, the eldest of my companions discovered 
that she had charged for both meals. This was 
resisted. Mine hostess was very clamorous and 
positive. Some mild arguments were used on the 
part of the Quakers, for which the heated mind of 
the good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. 
The guard came with his usual peremptory notice. 
The Quakers pulled out their money and formally 
tendered it — so much for tea — I, in humble imita- 
tion, tendering mine — for the supper which I had 
taken. She would not relax in her demand. Sa 
they all three quietly put up their silver, as did 
myself, and marched out of the room, the eldest 
and gravest going first, with myself closing up the 
rear, who thought I could not do better than follow 
the example of such grave and warrantable person- 
ages. We got in. The steps went up. The coach 



2 1 8 Impei^/ect Sympathies. 

drove off. The murmurs of mine hostess, not very 
indistinctly or ambiguously pronounced, became after 
a time inaudible — and now my conscience, which the 
whimsical scene had for a while suspended, begin- 
ning to give some twitches, I waited, in the hope 
that some justification would be offered by these 
serious persons for the seeming injustice of their 
conduct. To my great surprise not a syllable was 
dropped on the subject. They sat as mute as at a 
meeting. At length the eldest of them broke silence, 
by inquiring of his next neighbour, '' Hast thee 
heard how Indigos go at the India House ? " and 
the question operated as soporific on my moral 
feeling as far as Exeter. 




l\erT)iniscencej of 

of Rirmin^Oi^vrru ' 



I AM the only son of a considerable brazier ini 
Birmingham,* who, dying in 1803, ^^^^ ^^ successor 
to the business, with no other encumbrance than a. 
sort of rent-charge, which I am enjoined to pay 

* From the Neiv Monthly Magazine, 1826. 



r2 20 Reviiniscenc3s of yitke yitdkins, Esq. 

•out of it, of ninety-three pounds sterling per 
■annum, to his widow, my mother ; and which the 
improving state of the concern, I bless God, has 
hitherto enabled me to discharge with punctuality. 
(I say I am enjoined to pay the said sum, but not 
;strictly obligated : that is to say, as the will is 
worded, I believe the law would relieve me from 
•the payment of it ; but the wishes of a dying 
parent should in some sort have the effect of law.) 
So that, though the annual profits of my business, 
on an average of the last three or four years, 
would appear to an indifferent observer, who should 
inspect my shop-books, to amount to the sum of 
one thousand, three hundred and three pounds, 
odd shillings, the real proceeds in that time have 
fallen short of that sum to the amount of the 
aforesaid payment of ninety-three pounds sterling 
annually. 

I was always my father's favourite. He took a 
delight, to the very last, in recounting the little 
sagacious tricks and innocent artifices of my child- 
liood. One manifestation thereof I never heard 



Reminiscences of Jvke Jtidkins, Esq. 2 2 r 



him repeat without tears of joy trlckhng down his 
cheeks. It seems that when I quitted the paternal 
roof (Aug. 27, 1788), being then six years and not 
quite a month old, to proceed to the Free School 
at Warwick, where my 
father was a sort of trus- 
tee, my mother — as 
mothers' are usually pro- 
vident on these occasions 
■ — had stuffed the pockets 
of the coach, which was 
to convey me and six 
more children of my own 
growth that were going 

^^ 1 . 1 1 • 1 " I tvas always itfv father's /uvou7-ite," 

to be entered along with 

me at the same seminary, with a prodigious quantity 
of gingerbread, which I remember my father said 
was more than was needed : and so indeed it 
was ; for if I had had to eat it all myself, it 
would have got stale and mouldy before it had 
been half spent. The consideration whereof set 
me upon my contrivances how I 




2 22 Reminiscences of Jitke Judkins, Esq. 

myself as much of the gingerbread as would keep 
good for the next two or three days, and yet none 
of the rest in manner be wasted. I had a little 
pair of pocket-compasses, which I usually carried 
about me for the purpose of making draughts and 
measurements, at which I was always very ingenious, 
of the various engines and mechanical inventions 
in which such a town as Birmingham abounded. 
By means of these, and a small penknife which 




"/ had a litt'.c pair of poc'cet-cojupasses.''' 



my father had given me, I cut out the one half 
of the cake, calculating that the remainder would 



Reminiscences of Juke yndkins, Esq. 223 

reasonably serve my turn ; and subdividing it into 
many little slices, which were curious to see for the 
neatness and niceness of their proportion, I sold it 
out in so many pennyworths to my young com- 
panions as served us all the way to Warwick, which 
is a distance of some twenty miles from^ this town ; 
and very merry, I assure you, we made ourselves with 
it, feasting all the way. By this honest stratagem 
I put double the prime cost of the gingerbread into 
my purse, and secured as much as I thought would 
keep good and moist for my next two or three 
days' eating. When I told this to my parents on 
their first visit to me at Warwick, my father (good 
man) patted me on the cheek, and stroked my 
head, and seemed as if he could never make enough 
of me ; but my mother unaccountably burst into 
tears, and said " it was a very niggardly action," or 
some such expression, and that "she would rather 
it w^ould please God to take me " — meaning (God 
help me!) that I should die — "than that she should 
live to see me grow up a mean man : " which 
shows the difference of parent from parent, and 



Reminiscence's of ynke yttdkins, Esq. 



how some mothers are more harsh and intolerant 
to their children than some fathers, when we might 
expect quite the contrary. My father, however, 
loaded me with presents from that time, which 
made me the envy of my schoolfellows. As I felt 
this growing- disposition in 
them, I naturally sought to 
avert it by all the means in 
my power ; and from that time 
I used to eat my little pack- 
ages of fruit and other nice 
things in a corner, so privately 
that I was never found out. 
Once, I remember, I had a huee 
apple sent me, of that sort which 
they call cats -heads. I con- 
cealed this all day under my 
pillow ; and at night, but not before I had ascer- 
tained that my bedfellow was sound asleep — which 
I did by pinching him rather smartly two or three 
times, which he seemed to perceive no more than 
a dead person, though once or twice he made a 




'*/ 7ised to eat my little packages 
of fruit in a corner." 



Reminiscences of Juke yudkins, Esq. 225 

motion as if he would turn, which — frightened me— 
I say, when I had made all sure, I fell to work 
upon my apple ; and, though it was as big as an 
ordinary man's two fists, I made shift to get 
through it before it was time to get up. And a 
more delicious feast I never made : thinking all 
night what a good parent I had (I mean my 
father) to send me so many nice things, when the 
poor lad that lay by me had no parent or friend in 
the world to send him anything nice; and thinking 
of his desolate condition, I munched and munched 
as silently as I could, that I might not set him 
a-longing if he overheard me. And yet, for all 
this considerateness and attention to other people's 
feelings, I was never much a favourite with my 
schoolfellows ; which I have often wondered at, 
seeing that I never defrauded any one of them of 
the value of a halfpenny, or told stories of them to 
their master, as some little lying boys would do, 
but was ready to do any of them all the services 
in my power, that were consistent with my own 
well-doing. I think nobody can be expected to go 

Q 



2 26 Reminiscences of J tike Judkins^ Esq. 

further than that. But I am detaining my reader 
too long in recording my juvenile days. It Is time 
I should go forward to a season when it became 
natural that I should have some thoughts of 
marrying, and, as they say, settling in the world. 
Nevertheless, my reflections on what I may call 
the boyish period of my life may have their use to 
some readers. It is pleasant to trace the man in 
the boy ; to observ^e shoots of generosity in those 
young years ; and to watch the progress of liberal 
sentiments, and what I may call a genteel way of 
thinking, which is discernible in some children at a 
very early age, and usually lays the foundation of 
all that Is praiseworthy In the manly character 
afterwards. 

With the warmest Inclinations towards that way 
of life, and a serious conviction of its superior ad- 
vantages over a single one, it has been the strange 
infelicity of my lot never to have entered into the 
respectable estate of matrimony. Yet I was once 
very near it. I courted a young woman in my 
twenty-seventh year ; for so early I began to feel 



Reminiscences of Juke yudkins, Esq. 227 



symptoms of the tender passion ! She was well to 
do In the world, as they call It ; but yet not such 
a fortune as, all things 
considered, perhaps I 
might have pretended 
to. It was not my own 
choice altogether, but 
my mother very strongly 
pressed me to It. She 
was always putting It to 
me, that I had " comlngs- 
in sufficient " — that I 
" need not stand upon 
a portion," though the 
young woman, to do 
her justice, had con- 
siderable expectations, which yet did not quite 
come up to my mark, as I told you before. My 
mother had this saying always In her mouth, 
that I had " money enough ; " that It was time I 
enlarged my housekeeping, and to show a spirit 
befitting my circumstances. In short, what with 




"It was time I enlarged my housekeeping.* 



2 28 Reminiscences of fuke Jtcdkins, Esq. 

her Importunities, and my own desires in part 
co-operating, — for, as I said, I was not yet quite 
twenty-seven, — a time when the youthful feeHngs 
may be pardoned if they show a little impetuosity, 
—I resolved, I say, upon all these considerations, 
to set about the business of courting In right 
earnest. I was a young man then, and having a 
spice of romance in my character (as the reader 
has doubtless observed long ago), such as that sex 
is apt to be taken with, I had reason in no long 
time to think my addresses were anything but dis- 
agreeable. Certainly the happiest part of a young 
man's life is the time when he Is going a-courting. 
All the generous Impulses are then awake, and he 
feels a double existence in participating his hopes 
and wishes with another being. Return yet again 
for a brief moment, ye visionary views — transient 
enchantments ; ye moonlight rambles with Cleora In 
the Silent Walk at Vauxhall (N.B.— About a mile 
from Birmingham, and resembling the gardens of 
that name near London, only that the price of 
admission Is lower,) when the nightingale has sus- 



Reminiscences of Juke Jttdkins, Esq, 229 



pended her notes In June to listen to our loving 
discourses, while the moon was overhead ! (for we 
generally used to take our tea at Cleora's mother's 
before we set out, not so much to save expenses 
as to avoid the publicity of a repast In the gardens 
—coming in much about the time of half-price, as 
they call it) — ye soft Intercommunions of soul, 




" The Lovittg disputes we had iitider those trees." 



when, exchanging mutual vows, we prattled of 
coming felicities. The loving disputes we have had 



230 Reminiscences of J tike Jtidkins^ Esq. 

under those trees, when this house (planning our 
future settlement) was rejected, because, though 
cheap, it was dull ; and the other house was given 
up because, though agreeably situated, it was too 
high-rented ! — one was too much in the heart of the 
town, another was too far from business. These 
minutiae will seem impertinent to the aged and the 
prudent. I write them only to the young. Young 
lovers, and passionate as being young (such were 
Cleora and I then), alone can understand me. 
After some weeks wasted, as I may now call it, in 
this sort of amorous colloquy, we at length fixed 
upon the house in the High Street, No. 203, just 
vacated by the death of Mr. Hutton of this town, 
for our future residence. I had all the time lived 
in lodgings (only renting a shop for business), to be 
near my mother, — near, I say; not in the same house, 
for that would have been to introduce confusion 
into our housekeeping, which it was desirable to 
keep separate. Oh, the loving wrangles, the en- 
dearing differences, I had with Cleora, before we 
could quite make up our minds to the house that 



Reminiscences of Juke Judkins, Esq. 231 



was to receive us ! — I pretending, for argument's 
sake, the rent was too high, and she insisting 
that the taxes were moderate in proportion ; and 
love at last reconciling us in the same choice. I 
think at that time, moderately speaking, she might 
have had anything out of me for asking. I do 
not, nor shall ever, regret that my character at 
that time was marked with a tinge of prodigality. 
Age comes fast enough upon us, and, in its good 
time, will prune away all that is inconvenient in 
these excesses. Perhaps it is right that it should 
do so. Matters, as I said, were ripening to a con- 
clusion between us, only the house was yet not 
absolutely taken, — some necessary arrangements 
which the ardour of my youthful impetuosity could 
hardly brook at that time (love and youth will be 
precipitate), — some preliminary arrangements, I say, 
with the landlord, respecting fixtures, — very neces- 
sary things to be considered in a young man about 
to settle in the world, though not very accordant 
with the impatient state of my then passions, — some 
obstacles about the valuation of the fixtures, had 



232 Reminiscences of J tike Jtidkins, Esq. 



hitherto precluded (and I shall always think provi- 
dentially) my final closes with his offer, when one 
of those accidents which, unimportant in themselves, 
often arise to give a turn to the most serious in- 
tentions of our life, intervened, and put an end at 
once to my projects of wiving and of housekeeping. 
I was never much given to theatrical entertain- 
ments ; that is, at no time of my life was I ever 
what they call a regular play-goer ; but on some 
occasion of a benefit-night, which was expected to 
be very productive, and indeed turned out so, 
Cleora expressing a desire to be present, I could 
do no less than offer, as I did very willingly, to 
squire her and her mother to the pit. At that 
time it was not customary in our town for trades- 
folk, except some of the very topping ones, to sit 
as they now do, in the boxes. At the time 
appointed, I waited upon the ladies, who had 
brought with them a young man, a distant relation, 
whom it seems they had invited to be of the party. 
This a little disconcerted me, as I had about me 
barely silver enough to pay for our three selves at 



Reminiscences of Jtcke Judkins, Esq. 233 



the door, and did not at first know that their 
relation had proposed paying for himself. However, 




** This a little disconcerted me." 

to do the young man justice, he not only paid for 
himself, but for the old lady besides, leaving me 
only to pay for two, as it were. In our passage 
to the theatre the notice of Cleora was attracted to 
some orange wenches that stood about the doors 
vending their commodities. She was leaning on 
my arm, and I could feel her every now and then 
giving me a nudge, as it is called, which I after- 

R 



234 Rejnintscences of Jttke Judkins, Esq. 

wards discovered were hints that I should buy some 
oranges. It seems it is a custom at Birmingham, 
and perhaps in other places, when a gentleman 
treats ladies to the play, especially when a full 
night is expected, and that the house will be incon- 
veniently warm, to provide them with this kind of 
fruit, oranges being esteemed for their cooling 
property. But how could I guess at that, never 
having treated ladies to a play before, and being, 
as I said, quite a novice at entertainments of this 
kind ? At last she spoke plain out, and begged 
that I would buy some of " those oranges," pointing 
to a particular barrow. But when I came to ex- 
amine the fruit, I did not think the quality of it 
was answerable to the price. In this way I handled 
several baskets of them, but something in them all 
displeased me. Some had thin rinds, and some 
were plainly over-ripe, which is as great a fault as 
not being ripe enough ; and I could not (what they 
call) make a bargain. While I stood haggling with 
the women, secretly determining to put off my 
purchase till I should get within the theatre, where 



Remiftiscences of Juke Judkins, Esq. 235 



I expected we should have better choice, the young 

man, the cousin (who, it seems, had left us without 

my missing him), came running to us with his 

pockets stuffed out with oranges, 

inside and out, as they say. It 

seems, not liking the look of 

the barrow-fruit any more than 

myself, he had slipped away to 

an eminent fruiterer's, about 

three doors distant, which I 

never had the sense to think 

of, and had laid out a matter 

of two shillings in some of the 

best St. Michael's I think I 

ever tasted. What a little 

hinge, as I said before, the 

most important affairs in life 

may turn upon ! The mere 

inadvertence to the fact that there was an eminent 

fruiterer's within three doors of us, though we had 

just passed it without the thought once occurring to 

me, which he had taken advantage of, lost me the 




Came running to 7is ivith his 
pockets stuffed otit vjiik 
oranges." 



236 Reminiscences of yuke yudkins, Esq. 

affection of my Cleora. From that time she visibly 
cooled towards me, and her partiality was as visibly 
transferred to this cousin. I was long unable to 
account for this change in her behaviour, when one 
day, accidentally discoursing of oranges to my 
mother, alone, she let drop a sort of reproach to 
me, as if I had offended Cleora by my nearness, 
as she called it, that evening. Even now, when 
Cleora has been wedded some years to that same 
officious relation, as I may call him, I can hardly 
be persuaded that such a trifle could have been 
the motive to her inconstancy ; for could she 
suppose that I would sacrifice my dearest hopes in 
her to the paltry sum of two shillings, when I s 
going to treat her to the play, and her mother 
(an expense of more than four times that amoun 
if the young man had not interfered to pay for c.i_ 
latter, as I mentioned ? But the caprices of th " 
sex are past finding out, and I begin to think my 
mother was in the right ; for doubtless women know 
women better than we can pretend to know them. 

LONDON : WM. CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. 



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